Tag Archives: Germany

German establishment rounds on anti-immigration party over Islam

Vote for German AfD

BERLIN (Reuters) – German politicians from across the spectrum criticized the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) on Monday after the party declared Islam incompatible with the constitution.

The AfD, which has surged onto the political scene since its launch three years ago, backed a manifesto pledge at a congress on Sunday to ban on minarets and the burqa, the full face and body-covering gown worn by some Muslim women.

With concerns about Europe’s migrant crisis fuelling the AfD’s rise, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats led criticism of the party.

“What the AfD has decided on is an attack on almost all religions,” Armin Laschet, deputy chairman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), told ARD television.

“They have identified Islam as a foreign body in Germany,” he said. “That is divisive, and startling to a Christian Democratic party for which faith has meaning.”

Greens parliamentary party leader Katrin Goering-Eckardt described the AfD manifesto as “reactionary” and accused the party of dividing society with Islamophobia.

Opinion polls give the AfD support of up to 14 percent, presenting a serious challenge to Merkel’s conservatives and other established parties ahead of a 2017 federal election. They rule out any coalition with the AfD.

The AfD has no lawmakers in the federal parliament in Berlin but has members in half of Germany’s 16 regional state assemblies.

Merkel has said freedom of religion for all is guaranteed by Germany’s constitution and that Islam is a part of Germany.

Germany is home to nearly 4 million Muslims, about 5 percent of the total population. Community leaders have called on politicians to ensure that no religious community be disadvantaged and that Islam not be defined as a “foe”.

Many of the longer established Muslim community came from Turkey to find work. Last year, more than a million, mostly Muslim migrants, arrived in Germany. Most had fled conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Alexander Gauland, who leads the AfD in the eastern state of Brandenburg, said Muslims could still practise their faith in Germany.

“A Muslim in Germany can follow his religion without minarets. The AfD has nothing against places of worship,” Gauland told Deutschlandfunk radio, insisting his party did not want existing minarets torn down but rather no new ones built.

Aiman Mazyek, head of Germany’s Central Council of Muslims who has likened the AfD’s attitude towards his community to that of Hitler’s Nazis towards Jews, told the Osnabruecker Zeitung the AfD manifesto was “an Islamophobic program” that “is of no help to solve problems, but rather just divides our country.”

(Writing by Paul Carrel; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Former Auschwitz guard apologizes at trial; says it was ‘nightmare’

Defendant Hanning, a 94-year-old former guard at Auschwitz death camp, arrives for the continuation of his trial in Detmold

By Elke Ahlswede

DETMOLD, Germany (Reuters) – A 94-year-old former Auschwitz guard on trial in Germany apologized in court to victims on Friday, telling them he regretted being part of a “criminal organization” that had killed so many people and caused such suffering.

“I’m ashamed that I knowingly let injustice happen and did nothing to oppose it”, said Reinhold Hanning, a former Nazi SS officer, seated in a wheelchair in the court in Detmold.

Hanning is charged with being an accessory to the murder of at least 170,000 people.

Holocaust survivors, who detailed their horrific experiences at the trial which opened in February, have pleaded with the accused to break his silence in what could be one of the last Holocaust court cases in Germany.

Hanning finally broke the silence he kept over the course of 12 hearings, each limited to two hours due to his old age.

Reading in a firm voice from a paper he took out of his gray suit pocket, he said: “I want to tell you that I deeply regret having been part of a criminal organization that is responsible for the death of many innocent people, for the destruction of countless families, for misery, torment and suffering on the side of the victims and their relatives”.

“I have remained silent for a long time, I have remained silent all of my life,” he added.

Just before, his lawyer, Johannes Salmen, had given a detailed account of the defendant’s view of his life and particularly his time in Auschwitz.

In this 22-page long declaration, Hanning admitted having known about mass murder in the death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.

“I’ve tried to repress this period for my whole life. Auschwitz was a nightmare, I wish I had never been there,” the lawyer cited Hanning as saying.

The accused was sent there after being wounded in battle and his request to rejoin his comrades on the front had been rejected twice, he said.

“I accept his apology but I can’t forgive him,” said Leon Schwarzbaum, a 95-year-old Holocaust survivor and co-plaintiff.

She said Hanning should have recounted everything that happened in Auschwitz and “what he took part in”.

Although Hanning is not charged with having been directly involved in any killings at the camp, prosecutors accuse him of facilitating the slaughter in his capacity as a guard at the camp where 1.2 million people, most of them Jews, were killed.

A precedent for such charges was set in 2011, when death camp guard Ivan Demjanjuk was convicted.

Accused by the prosecutor’s office in Dortmund as well as by 40 joint plaintiffs from Hungary, Israel, Canada, Britain, the United States and Germany, Hanning is said to have joined the SS forces voluntarily at the age of 18 in 1940.

Hanning on Friday said however that his stepmother, a member of the Nazi-party, urged him to join.

A verdict is expected on May 27.

Germany is holding what are likely to be its last trials linked to the Holocaust, in which more than six million people, mostly Jews, were killed by the Nazis.

In addition to Hanning, one other man and one woman in their 90s are accused of being accessories to the murder of hundreds of thousands of people at Auschwitz.

A third man who was a member of the Nazi SS guard team at Auschwitz died at the age of 93 this month, days before his trial was due to start.

(Writing by Elke Ahlswede and Joseph Nasr; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Islamic State urges attacks on German chancellery, Bonn airport: SITE group

Konrad Adenauer Airport

BERLIN (Reuters) – Islamic State posted pictures on the Internet calling on German Muslims to carry out Brussels-style attacks in Germany, singling out Chancellor Angela Merkel’s offices and the Cologne-Bonn airport as targets, the SITE intelligence group reported.

Western Europe is on high security alert after last week’s Islamic State suicide bombings in the Belgian capital that killed 32 people at its airport and in a metro station. On Wednesday, France said it was investigating a man on suspicion of planning an imminent act of “extreme violence”.

The Islamic State images and graphics, widely published by German media on Thursday, included slogans in German inciting Muslims to commit violence against the “enemy of Allah.”

Germany’s BKA federal police, who monitor suspected militants with German passports returning from stints fighting in Syria and Iraq, said it knew of the images but that their publication did not necessitate extra security measures.

“We are aware of this material and our experts are checking it,” a BKA spokeswoman said. “It is clear that Germany is the focus of international terrorism and that attacks could happen, but this material doesn’t change our security assessment.”

Federal police chief Holger Muench said after the March 22 attacks in Brussels that Islamic State appeared eager to carry out further “spectacular” attacks in Europe as it was suffering setbacks on battlefields in Iraq and Syria.

One of the disseminated Islamic State images features a militant in combat fatigues standing in a field and gazing at Cologne-Bonn airport with a caption reading: “What your brothers in Belgium were able to do, you can do too.”

Another shows the German chancellery building in Berlin on fire with an Islamic State fighter and a tank standing outside the structure. The headline reads: “Germany is a battlefield.”

Germany joined the U.S.-led air strike campaign against Islamic State in Syria last year, though limiting its role to reconnaissance and refueling missions, after the jihadist group killed 130 people in shooting and bombing attacks in Paris.

A third graphic featured a military jet, which German media identified as a Tornado used by the German air force, against the backdrop of a mountainous area juxtaposed with the bloodied faces of women and children – apparently meant to represent civilians who Islamic State says have been killed by air strikes on areas it controls.

The caption under this image says: “Will you continue to grieve or will you finally act?”

All five pictures circulated on social media on Wednesday bore the logo of Furat Media, an Islamic State affiliate, according to SITE.

German media also published an Islamic State video celebrating the attacks in Brussels that featured a three-second shot of Frankfurt Airport, apparently taken from German television news footage.

The BKA spokeswoman said police were aware of that video as well and current security measures were sufficient.

(Reporting by Joseph Nasr and Tina Bellon; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Germany wants refugees to integrate or lose residency rights

US Europe Migrants

BERLIN (Reuters) – German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said he is planning a new law that will require refugees to learn German and integrate into society, or else lose their permanent right of residence.

The initiative comes after voters punished Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives in regional elections earlier this month, giving a thumbs-down to her open-door refugee policy and turning in droves to the anti-immigrant party Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Around 1 million migrants arrived in Germany last year – many fleeing conflict and economic hardship in the Middle East and Africa – and de Maiziere said around 100,000 more had arrived so far this year.

Germany expected that in return for language lessons, social benefits and housing, the new arrivals made an effort to integrate, he told ARD television.

“For those who refuse to learn German, for those who refuse to allow their relatives to integrate – for instance women or girls – for those who reject job offers: for them, there cannot be an unlimited settlement permit after three years,” he said.

De Maiziere, who belongs to Merkel’s conservatives party, added that he wanted “a link between successful integration and the permission for how long one is allowed to stay in Germany.”

Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel welcomed the draft law, which is planned for May.

“We must not only support integration but demand it,” Gabriel told mass-selling daily Bild.

Gabriel’s Social Democrats, the junior partner in Germany’s ruling coalition with Merkel’s conservatives, also suffered losses in this month’s elections in three German states.

(Writing by Paul Carrel; Editing by Susan Fenton)

Germany searches home of two Syrians suspected of planning attack

BERLIN (Reuters) – German police have raided the home of two Syrian brothers with links to the militant group Islamic State (IS), suspecting that they were preparing an attack, prosecutors in Frankfurt said on Thursday.

Police confiscated an air pistol, electronic storage devices, mobile phones and $16,000 in cash but did not arrest the brothers, 21 and 30 years old.

Prosecutors did not give more information on the exact nature of the suspected crime, which they called a “serious act of violent subversion”.

The older brother had entered Germany in February 2015 with a forged passport obtained by IS, a crime for which he was sentenced and fined last year.

Prosecutors said that in social media postings he had promoted the militant group, threatened German authorities and justified last November’s attacks in Paris.

The younger brother published a picture of himself on social media that showed him sitting in a “luxury car belonging to his brother” sporting a pistol, the prosecutor’s office said.

Germany has been on alert since militants with links to Islamic State killed 130 people in Paris in November.

The anxieties have been fueled by the arrival of over 1 million migrants in Germany last year, many of them fleeing war and conflict in the Middle East and beyond.

Last month, the government said that the whereabouts of more than 140,000 people registered in 2015 were unknown.

(Reporting by Tina Bellon)

Germany, France criticize Israel for seizing West Bank land

BERLIN/PARIS (Reuters) – Germany and France on Wednesday criticized Israel’s decision to appropriate large tracts of land in the occupied West Bank, saying the move violated international law and contradicted a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israeli Army Radio said on Tuesday the land was near the Dead Sea and the Palestinian city of Jericho.

Israel says it intends to keep large settlement blocs in any future peace agreement with the Palestinians. Palestinians, who seek to establish a state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, fear Israeli settlement expansion will deny them a viable country.

“This decision sends a wrong signal at the wrong time,” the German Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“Especially in the current tense situation, both parties in the Middle East conflict are called on to take steps for a de-escalation and to find ways that lead to an urgently needed resumption of peace negotiations,” it said.

In Paris, Foreign Ministry spokesman Romain Nadal said France was “extremely concerned” by the Israeli decision.

“Settlements constitute a violation of international law and contradict commitments made by Israeli authorities in favor of a two-state solution,” the spokesman said.

Palestinians have cited Israeli settlement activity as one of the factors behind the collapse of U.S.-brokered peace talks in 2014, and a surge of violence over the past five months has dimmed hopes negotiations could be revived any time soon.

Germany, which has forged close relations with Israel in the decades since the Holocaust, has repeatedly criticized Israel for its settlement plans.

“All people in Israel and Palestine have a right to live in peace and security. Only a clear political perspective for a sustainable two-state solution can guarantee this in the long term,” the ministry said.

Paris is lobbying for an international peace conference before May that would outline incentives and give guarantees for Israelis and Palestinians to resume face-to-face talks before August and try to end the decades-long conflict.

Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat on Tuesday called on the international community to press Israel to stop land confiscations. Most countries view Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as illegal and an obstacle to peace.

Israel’s Peace Now movement, which tracks and opposes Israeli settlement in territory captured in the 1967 war, said the reported seizure of 579 acres represented the largest land confiscation in the West Bank in recent years.

(Reporting By John Irish in Paris and Michael Nienaber in Berlin; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Germany shuts down Islamic center in Bremen, raids apartments

BREMEN, Germany (Reuters) – The northern German city-state of Bremen shut down an Islamic cultural center on Tuesday after police raided it and the apartments of 12 of its members on suspicion of associations with Islamist militants.

Bremen Interior Minister Ulrich Maeurer said The Islamic Association Bremen was closely linked to a similar cultural organization that was banned after some of its members joined the Islamic State (IS) insurgent group in Syria.

More than 220 officers participated in the raids, confiscating mobile phones, computers, hard drives and other memory cards, Maeurer told a news conference.

No arrests were made. Police also searched a car repair shop in Delmenhorst, just outside Bremen.

“This organization has promoted the radicalization of people, and support and following for IS. It really does mean that people who live in our immediate neighborhood are willing to become terrorists overnight,” Maeurer said.

“So I must sound cynical when I ask: What security do we have when they only plan attacks in Syria? We must assume that this could also happen in Germany.”

Bremen authorities banned the Culture and Family Society in the city in December 2014, saying that it had promoted jihad (holy war) and martyrdom among members, six of whom died while fighting with IS in Syria.

The German federal police chief said last month that the number of Islamist militants returning to Germany from Syria and Iraq was on the rise and more than 400 people were under surveillance.

(Reporting by Reuters TV; Writing by Joseph Nasr; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

German spy agency says ISIS sending fighters disguised as refugees

BERLIN (Reuters) – Islamic State militants have slipped into Europe disguised as refugees, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (BfV) said on Friday, a day after security forces thwarted a potential IS attack in Berlin.

Hans-Georg Maassen said the terrorist attacks in Paris last November had shown that Islamic State was deliberately planting terrorists among the refugees flowing into Europe.

“Then we have repeatedly seen that terrorists … have slipped in camouflaged or disguised as refugees. This is a fact that the security agencies are facing,” Maassen told ZDF television.

“We are trying to recognize and identify whether there are still more IS fighters or terrorists from IS that have slipped in,” he added.

The Berliner Zeitung newspaper cited Maassen on Friday as saying that the BfV had received more than 100 tip-offs that there were Islamic State fighters among the refugees currently staying in Germany.

German fears about an attack have risen since the Paris killings. On Thursday, German forces arrested two men suspected of links to Islamic State militants preparing an attack in the German capital.

Authorities also canceled a friendly international soccer match in Hanover last year and closed stations in Munich at New Year due to security concerns.

Maassen, however, warned against alarm.

“We are in a serious situation and there is a high risk that there could be an attack. But the security agencies, the intelligence services and the police authorities are very alert and our goal is to minimize the risk as best we can,” he said.

(Reporting by Caroline Copley; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

German police conduct raids over possible Islamic State attack

BERLIN (Reuters) – German forces arrested two men on Thursday suspected of links to Islamic State militants preparing an attack in the German capital, police and prosecutors said, amid fears of another deadly attack on European soil.

Police and special forces raided four flats and two offices in Berlin and properties in the northern regions of North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony.

“Specifically (the raids) concern possible plans for an attack in Germany, even more specifically in Berlin,” Martin Steltner, a spokesman for Berlin prosecutors, told Reuters TV.

Berlin police spokesman Stefan Redlich said the authorities were investigating four Algerian men. Police detained two men and a woman.

“Our understanding is that the four men accused could have planned to carry out such an attack together,” Steltner said.

German media reported that central Berlin landmarks and tourist attractions Checkpoint Charlie and Alexanderplatz were targets.

Redlich said the Berlin suspects worked in those two locations and that searches were carried out there. But he could not confirm that they were the targets.

Redlich and Steltner said police acted on a tip-off but gave no further details.

Security agencies have been monitoring the suspects since January, Funke Media Group said. The men behaved conspiratorially, changed their mobile phones multiple times and communicated via instant messaging services, it added.

The Tagesspiegel newspaper, citing security sources, said leading members of Islamic State (IS), who were responsible for the Paris attacks that killed 130 people in November, had given the order for an attack in Germany.

Prosecutors declined to comment on the report.

‘NO SMOKING GUN’

Police seized computers, mobile telephones and sketches in the raids, Steltner said, adding “we haven’t found the smoking gun”.

A couple was arrested in North Rhine-Westphalia and another man was arrested in Berlin, Steltner said. All were detained on existing warrants related to other matters.

The man detained in North-Rhine Westphalia was arrested in a shelter for refugees and arrived a short while ago in Germany claiming to be from Syria, Steltner said.

He is wanted by Algerian authorities, who believe he is a member of Islamic State, said Steltner. He is suspected of having military training in Syria.

The status of the other men was unclear, but Redlich said the two Berlin-based suspects were not refugees.

“In Berlin, the two persons we are investigating are not refugees,” Redlich added. “Both have jobs here and have been here a long time.”

German fears about an attack have risen since the Paris killings. Authorities canceled a friendly international soccer match in Hanover last year and closed stations in Munich at New Year due to security concerns.

(Additional reporting by Madeline Chambers, Victoria Bryan and Paul Carrel in Berlin and Matthias Inverardi in Duesseldorf; Editing by Larry King and Katharine Houreld)

Number of migrants registering in Germany falls markedly in January

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany registered 91,671 migrants in January, less than half November’s level, officials said on Thursday as pressure mounted on Chancellor Angela Merkel to deliver on her pledge to reduce the influx.

Support for Merkel has fallen sharply due to her open-door refugee policy, with a poll on Wednesday showing 81 percent of people think her government does not have the situation under control.

An Interior Ministry statement on the latest migrant tally gave no explanation for the notable drop in migrant arrivals, but it said previously that a downward trend seen since late last year was due mainly to freezing winter weather.

Germany has also reimposed spot controls on border points with Austria used by incoming migrants and is seeking to speed up deportations of those not qualifying for asylum.

Merkel has said the number of migrants entering Germany will fall after 1.1 million people arrived last year. Germany was the final destination for the vast majority of migrants who reached the European continent in 2015.

Public unease has grown since a wave of sexual assaults on women in Cologne at New Year that police say were carried out largely by young men of Arab and North African appearance.

The interior ministry said 91,671 people had registered on the so-called EASY system in January, more than double the number in the same month a year ago, although this was more than a third down from December and less than half of November’s total.

Among last month’s total, some 35,822 were from Syria and about 18,000 from both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The EASY system records people in reception centers and then distributes them around the country based on each state’s population and tax revenues. Registration on this system is separate from officially applying for asylum.

The official number of asylum applications rose to 52,103 in January, about double the level in the same month last year and a 7.9 percent rise from December, said the ministry.

Some 1,623 people from Morocco were entered on the EASY system and the top-selling Bild daily cited government sources saying a basic agreement had been reached with North African countries about returning rejected asylum seekers there.

At the end of January, there was a backlog of some 371,754 asylum applications at the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), the interior ministry said on Thursday. That was around 7,000 more than at the end of December.

(Reporting by Madeline Chambers and Holger Hansen; Editing by Tom Heneghan)