The misuse of coronavirus aid to finance terrorist activities was reported by German newspaper Welt am Sonntag.
“In individual cases there is a suspicion of direct terrorism financing,” a source within Berlin law enforcement told the newspaper.
The head of an influential Turkish Muslim association in Germany resigned from his position on Thursday after his antisemitic social media postings were exposed by a left-wing group, vowing at the same time to clear his name.
Mustafa Keskin — the chairman of the branch of DITIB, a Turkish religious group, in the university city of Göttingen — tendered his resignation after his posts on various social media platforms were brought to light by Die Falken (The Falcons), a socialist youth organization.
Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) have placed the Alternative for Germany (AfD) under surveillance, according to local media.
That designation gives state agents more powers for surveillance in certain circumstances, including potentially tapping the party’s communications.
The BfV refused to comment on media reports from Der Spiegel magazine, the DPA news agency and public broadcaster ARD. The Interior Ministry, which oversees the BfV, said it would neither confirm nor deny them.
A pattern emerges…
France bans far-right group Generation Identity
The French government on Wednesday agreed to ban the far-right group Generation Identity, saying the organization incited “discrimination, hatred and violence.”
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin posted the decree to ban GI on Twitter, saying it took into account the group’s “structure and military organization,” adding that GI can be regarded “as having the character of a private militia.”
Berlin’s Senate has announced on Twitter that it has banned the “jihadist-Salafist association Jama’atu Berlin,” also known as Tauhid Berlin.
The tweet Thursday said police in Berlin and Brandenburg had carried out early-morning searches of properties belonging to the group’s members.
A spokesman cited by the German press agency dpa said around 800 police — including special operations commandos — took part in the raids, which targeted the districts of Reinickendorf, Moabit, Wedding and Neukölln. No arrests were immediately reported.
“Why are the majority of anti-Semitic acts attributed to ‘right-wing’ German perpetrators? One can see a political motive behind this — growing anti-Semitism can be used politically as a weapon ‘against the right.'” — Tichys Einblick.
… A 2017 survey of German Jews by the University of Bielefeld found that 60% of anti-Semitic attacks were said to have been carried out by Muslims, compared to 19% by far-left extremists and 19% by far-right perpetrators. Muslims were also said to be responsible for 81% of anti-Semitic attacks involving physical violence. The survey found that 70% of German Jews believe that mass migration from the Muslim world has fueled anti-Semitism in Germany.
Nevertheless, German police, possibly under orders from political authorities, systematically assign unsolved anti-Semitic hate crimes to the far right. In one well-known case, police blamed far-right extremists for chanting the Nazi slogan “Sieg Heil” at an Islamist al-Quds rally in Berlin.
Wielding a large kitchen knife, Abdullah al-H H, a 20-year-old Syrian, allegedly stabbed the couple, who were visiting Dresden on 4 October.
Prosecutors claim al-H H, based in Aleppo, targeted the couple because they were gay and was motivated by radical Islamist ideology, being a recruiter for the Islamic State (ISIS).
He was charged last Thursday (11 February) with murder and attempted murder, according to Deutsche Welle.
German federal prosecutors charged a Syrian national suspected of stabbing two men last yearin the eastern city of Dresden, German media outlets reported Thursday.
The 20-year-old suspect is said to have been motivated by a radical Islamist ideology, and targeted the couple because they were homosexual, prosecutors say.
He is facing charges of murder and attempted murder with Islamist and homophobic motives, according to Der Spiegel magazine.
Armin Laschet, premier of North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, has been chosen as the new leader of the ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He is now in a position to succeed Angela Merkel as German chancellor after general elections this September.
Laschet, a Merkel loyalist and continuity candidate, narrowly beat conservative Friedrich Merz by 521 to 466 votes in a run-off vote by party delegates on January 16. The CDU had previously chosen Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer to succeed Merkel, but she stepped down as party leader in January 2020 after a series of regional electoral defeats cast doubt on her ability to retain the chancellorship.
JOE BIDEN looks tipped to battle it out with German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s successor who pushed a US-ISIS conspiracy theory.
…Mrs Merkel may not have much say in how the US-Germany relationship pans out, as she was last week replaced as leader of Germany’s Christian Democrats (CDU) by centrist Armin Laschet.
Many now note that while it is difficult to predict how Mr Laschet will engage with Mr Biden, looking back on the German politician’s previous rhetoric might offer some clue as to how their relationship will develop, and potentially collide.
…Mr Laschet, who was then MP for North Rhine-Westphalia, replied: “Yes, Mr Kerry, but You supported ISIS and Al Nusra against President Assad in Syria.
“And they are financed by Qatar and Saudi-Arabia.”
He added: “Assad was fighting against ISIS and Kerry tried to weaken Assad in this fight.”
Mr Laschet’s line has been described as a “conspiracy theory” which pushes an element of legitimacy onto the country’s President – who has been described as a dictator – Bashar al-Assad.
He went on to claim that many of the victims of the Syrian war were “killed by rebels and al Nusra terrorists”, and not overwhelmingly by Assad and his forces.
Germany’s right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has filed two lawsuits against the nation’s domestic security service that is reportedly about to designate it a “suspected” extremist group ahead of national elections.
The party has filed two legal complaints and two emergency motions against the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution – a domestic security agency known as BfV – the German dpa news agency reported. The move followed a series of media reports suggesting that BfV could formally declare the whole party a suspected extremist organization.
A wall of the Oswiecim Jewish cemetery was defaced with Nazi symbols, including a swastika and Nazi SS bolt, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The cemetery is located just under two miles from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, the Memorial posted on Twitter Sunday.
Germany’s two-year term as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council ended on December 31, 2020. The German Foreign Ministry, in a self-congratulatory compilation of its supposed achievements to “strengthen the international order,” declared that Germany now deserves to obtain a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
A closer examination of Germany’s voting patterns at the UN over the past several years, however, reveals a troubling double standard on a range of issues, especially on human rights, which the German government claims to be “a cornerstone” of its foreign policy.
As a social worker, Franco Clemens has experienced a lot. But nothing prepared him for what happened on New Year’s Eve five years ago. It happened “in multicultural Cologne, of all places, a melting pot of integration,” he reflects. The night began seemingly harmlessly.
Just as in years past, a crowd assembled in the square in front of the central railway station, right next to the city’s landmark gothic cathedral. Nothing unusual for the city in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia. But this time, a throng of about a thousand young men was forming in the crowd. Most of them were from the North African-Arabic region.
The United States is ratcheting up the threat of sanctions against European companies in an effort to deal a death blow to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany. The pipeline would double shipments of Russian natural gas to Germany by transporting the gas under the Baltic Sea. U.S. President Donald Trump, like his predecessor Barack Obama, has criticized the project because it would make Germany “captive” to Russia for its energy supplies.
Trump has been especially critical of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who, in opposition to the United States and many Eastern European countries, has doggedly pursued the pipeline project, which would funnel billions of dollars to Russia at a time that Germany is free-riding on the U.S. defense umbrella that protects Germany from that same Russia.
That would be the same Teutonic Tart noted here, she luvs her China too – Angela Merkel faces European revolt over China trade policy
China rudely dismissed German UN Ambassador Christoph Heusgen’s plea to release two Canadian detainees – Michael Kovrig and Michael Pavor, known as the “2 Michaels” – from custody in China.
