Mannichl was hospitalised until just before Christmas with critical injuries after he was stabbed on his front porch by a skinhead on December 13. The 52-year-old reported that the man said something along the lines of, “Greetings from the national resistance,” and said, "You leftist pig cop, you won't trample on the graves of our comrades any more," before stabbing Mannichl in the stomach with a 12-centimetre knife.
Police detained a couple believed to be active in the Bavarian neo-Nazi scene after the incident, but they were later released on December 23. Police are now collecting cigarette stubs near Mannichl’s Passau home in their search for clues in the unsolved case.
"It’s being investigated in every direction," spokesperson for the state office of criminal investigation (LKA) Karl Henz Segerer told news agency DPA in Munich on Monday. The LKA took over the 50-person special commission on the case from the Passau police after Christmas.
Far-right resentment in the region against the police reached a high point this July after the authorities – including Mannichl - ordered that the grave of a former neo-Nazi functionary be opened to remove an illegal Nazi flag that had been buried with the coffin.
The stabbing has has renewed the political pressure in Germany to introduce a ban on the neo-Nazi NPD party.
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