| Extremist group defeated in Germany Yesterday, a large police action took place in five German federal states aimed at Islamists active there. Since the pre-dawn hours, about 700 agents of the criminal police and other intelligence agencies conducted searches in dozens of apartments, mosques, offices in Berlin, Bonn, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt am Main, Freiburg and other cities. The organizer of the action is the Bavarian criminal police, whose partners are detectives from neighboring federal states.
This is not the first operation of this kind. The detectives have chosen a criminal structure associated with international terrorism as the current target. Among the 20 suspects are women.
Prosecutor Martin Hoffman, speaking at a press conference yesterday, noted that although the group does not have a name, it maintains close ties with the terrorist organizations Al-Tawhid and Ansar al-Islam. True, Hoffman added, “these connections have not yet gone so far as to investigate the formation of a new terrorist association.” The suspects are mainly Algerians and Tunisians, for whom investigators are making a big case. The main crime is the continuous production of false passports. “The money received,” said the prosecutor, “we suspect, was used to finance other goals of this group.” They consisted, as stated in the Freiburg police report, in organizing the illegal stay of Islamists in Germany and other Western countries.
By mid-yesterday, 14 suspects had been arrested. This is the merit of the special investigative group “Danube”. By all indications, the detectives were satisfied with the work. The head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the state of Baden-Württemberg stated without false modesty: “We have Islamist criminals and their meeting places under long-term surveillance. We have important information about criminal and extremist activities.”
Obviously, we are talking about a serious “observed contingent”. There are 2.5-2.7 million foreign Muslims in the country, as well as about 370-450 thousand German Muslims. According to the intelligence services, 10-15% of Muslims in Germany are organized into one group or another, some of which have extremist overtones. Yuri Shpakov, Berlin |
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