GENEVA: Radical Austrian nationalist Martin Sellner, banned from entering Switzerland, was arrested Saturday having crossed the border.
The 35-year-old, who advocates mass expulsions of foreigners, had been invited by the far-right group Junge Tat, known for its anti-immigration and anti-Islamic views, to speak at a conference in Zurich on Saturday.
Swiss federal police said in a decision published earlier this month that Sellner “is banned from entering the Swiss and Liechtenstein territories from October 10-27, 2024.”
He was arrested by Swiss police on Saturday in the northeastern Thurgau canton, in the town of Kreuzlingen, which lies on the border with the German city of Konstanz.
“Shortly after 10:30am, a 35-year-old person was stopped by forces of the Thurgau cantonal police on Swiss territory in Kreuzlingen and taken away for further investigations,” a Thurgau police spokesman told AFP.
Earlier this month, Swiss federal police spokesman Christoph Gnagi told AFP that Swiss law “provides for entry bans as a preventive police measure when there are indications of a threat to internal or external security.”
Swiss police had prevented Sellner from addressing a far-right gathering organized by Junge Tat near Zurich in March and deported him.
He was also barred from entering Germany in March, following a meeting with the far-right AfD party that sparked an uproar in the country. But a German court overturned the entry ban in May.
Sellner’s Identitarian Movement espouses the far-right white nationalist Great Replacement conspiracy theory, according to which white Europeans are being deliberately supplanted by non-white immigrants.
One of Sellner’s main proposals is that of “remigration,” expelling those without Austrian nationality “who are long-term unemployed” or that are living in “unassimilated parallel societies.”

JOHANNESBURG: Gunmen killed a Mozambique opposition lawyer and a party official after firing multiple rounds at a car in which they were traveling on Saturday, ratcheting up tensions ahead of protests against a disputed election result, rights groups said.
Mozambique’s new opposition Podemos party and its presidential candidate Venancio Mondlane have rejected provisional results showing a likely win for Frelimo, the party that has ruled Mozambique for half a century.
They have called for a nationwide strike on Monday.
Mozambican civil society election observer group More Integrity said the attack happened in the Bairro Da Coop neighborhood of the capital Maputo, killing Podemos lawyer Elvino Dias and party representative Paulo Guambe.
“They were brutally assassinated (in a) cold-blooded murder,” Adriano Nuvunga, director of Mozambique’s Center for Democracy and Human Rights (CDD), told Reuters by telephone.
“The indications that around 10 to 15 bullets were shot, and they died instantly.”
Human Rights Watch also issued a statement confirming the attack.
According to the latest election tally, Frelimo is leading in all 11 provinces and its candidate Daniel Chapo is widely expected to win the Oct. 9 election, but Western observers have cast doubt on the credibility of the poll.
They noted reports of vote buying, intimidation, inflated voter rolls in Frelimo strongholds and a lack of transparency in collation — problems that have marred most polls since Frelimo first introduced democracy in 1994 after two decades in power.
Full results are expected on Oct. 24, but many fear Monday’s protest could turn bloody. Mozambique’s security forces have opened fire on political protesters in the past, including after last year’s local elections, according to human rights groups.