“This act makes me angry,” tweeted Karamba Diaby, a deputy with the centre-left Social Democratic Party Witnesses alerted by the flames late Wednesday detained a man at the scene and a judge ordered him taken into custody BERLIN: Germany’s first black deputy said Thursday his offices had been targetted in an arson attack following death threats and shots fired against the building in previous years. “Happily, no one has been hurt,” tweeted Karamba Diaby, a deputy with the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). “This act makes me angry,” he said, adding that his offices would be out of service for some time. Witnesses alerted by the flames late Wednesday detained a man at the scene and a judge ordered him taken into custody. According to Diab, a German of Senegalese origin, the person in question had already racially abused him. “I’m horrified that a new, cowardly attack has been carried out against the constituency office of my Bundestag colleague,” said Saskia Esken, co-president of the SPD. Diaby, 61, was born in Senegal but has had German nationality since 2001. In 2020 he reported having received death threats from rightwing extremists after having found holes that appeared to have been made by a pellet gun in a window of his constituency office. There is growing concern in Germany at a rise in incidents targetting deputies. From verbal abuse and assaults to death threats. The political climate has become more polarized with the growing strength of the far right. In June 2019 a neonazi activist killed politician Walter Luebcke, a crime that shocked the country and highlighted the growing threat of right-wing extremism. A conservative politician, Luebcke had defended the pro-migration policies of the then chancellor Angela Merkel. In January, prosecutors charged five Germans with treason over a far-right plot to overthrow the government that included plans to abduct the health minister. And in a separate investigation, police said last December they had uncovered a group by a far-right group — which included a former deputy and an aristocrat — to overthrow the government.