BERLIN (dpa) – Less than a week before the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, a senior German official issued a stern warning over threats posed by Islamic extremists based here.
In a statement striking for its undiplomatic tone, Interior Minister Otto Schily on September 5 announced tough legislation aimed at curbing activities of the more than 31,000 Islamic fundamentalists believed to be in Germany.Authorities plan to start dismantling Islamic extremist structures which have until now evaded state control by declaring themselves religious organisations.Schily’s fears took on chilling urgency after it was revealed that three of the apparently Arab suspects in the U.S. attacks lived in the northern German port city of Hamburg.“We have to take a very tough course. I am for absolute severity,” said Schily in an interview with the magazine Der Spiegel, adding: “We cannot allow a small minority of the Moslems living here – in the worst case scenario – to recruit people for such attacks in the U.S.”As the newspaper Die Welt noted there is a big job ahead: “Germany serves as a logistics base and refuge for Islamic extremists,” the paper said.Berlin’s domestic security agency, the Verfassungsschutz, warns in its latest report that Islamic groups pose the country’s biggest foreign extremist threat.Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is clearly alarmed and at Friday’s regular news briefing the interior ministry spokesman refused almost all comment on investigations.The biggest extremist group in Germany is the “Islamic Community Milli Goerues” with some 27,000 members.But organisations such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Saudi Arabian dissident and accused terrorist Osama bin Laden also are active, officials say. Schily admitted to be “greatly concerned” about bin Laden associates in Germany.On Thursday it was announced that five men suspected of being members of bin Laden’s “Al Qaida” terrorist group will go on trial in Frankfurt next year. The men from Algeria, Iraq and France were arrested after investigators linked them to an apartment with weapons and explosives.The group will be charged with seeking to carry out a bomb attack in the French city of Strasbourg. There is no apparent connection with the attacks in New York and Washington.A key reason for the many Islamic extremists in Germany is that such people receive asylum precisely because they would often face persecution for their beliefs at home, said Andreas Rieck, of Hamburg’s Orient Institute. He said this was especially the case for some of the Turks, Syrians and Egyptians in Germany.“And then they feel secure here to push their extremist positions and also to build up their organisational networks and raise money,” said Rieck speaking in a NDR radio interview.According to official statistics over 1.6 million people are registered followers of the Islamic faith in Germany. But the real figure is estimated at up to three million out of a total population of 82 million. Islam is the second biggest faith after Christianity in Germany.Turks, who number over 2.1 million in Germany, comprise the country’s biggest community. There are also 115,000 Iranians, 82,000 Moroccans and 68,000 people from Afghanistan, according to official figures.German leaders have been quick to point out that most resident Moslems have nothing to do with the extremists.“The majority of Moslems living in Germany…are mourning their American friends just like Germans,” said Cem Oezdemir, a Greens member of parliament whose family comes from Turkey.But Rieck countered: “There is a very big group of sympathizers. Even for these attacks there are many expressing secret and in some cases open support.”Aside from terrorist fears, German officials are furious that some Islamic centres are being used to agitate against Israel and the country’s growing Jewish population which is nearing 100,000 with immigrants coming from Eastern Europe.With the terrible Holocaust legacy any kinds of attacks on Jews in Germany are a nightmare scenario for German leaders.One of Schily’s target groups, known as the Kaplan Association, disseminates “the worst sort of anti-Semitic slurs,” says the interior ministry.In other cases Islamic religious leaders in Germany have called for “the destruction” of “Jewish terrorists” and “American dogs.” They tell their followers to boycott Jewish and American firms in Germany and seek to bar contacts between their children and German children, said the ministry.
