Edwin Wagensveld, leader of the Dutch branch of the anti-Islamic movement Pegida, has been hunting for refugees on the Bulgarian border, a Pegida spokesperson told DutchNews.nl.

‘He was in Bulgaria to show that the border is as leaky as a sieve [with] 1000 people a day illegally entering the country,’ said Team Pegida, via email.

Tatjana Festerling, a far-right German politician and former Pegida leader, had posted on her Facebook page that she, ‘Ed the Dutchman’ and other volunteers had been patrolling the border last weekend to stop the ‘flood of invaders from Turkey’. Festerling claimed she and her associates were acting as ‘voluntary, unarmed and perfectly legal helpers and supporters of the Bulgarian border police’.

Team Pegida from the Netherlands added that with ‘peaceful and unarmed’ citizens, Wagensveld walked through the forest looking for illegal immigrants, claiming they found evidence of drug runners and a case containing 500g of opium. It is unclear if they reported this to authorities.

‘More of this kind of trip to other places will come,’ it promised.

Pictures on Facebook show Festerling and several hooded colleagues dressed in a uniform apparently based on that of a pro-Russian militia. The Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper reported that she appealed to the ‘men of Europe’ to travel to Bulgaria to support her group and stop ‘invaders on their campaign of robbery and rape in the name of Islam.’

updated on July 6 2016