Germany to tighten terrorism laws

By Batuk Gathani

BRUSSELS, OCT. 12. Police in Germany and Italy on Wednesday arrested suspected militants who are believed to have planned armed attacks on targets in Africa and the U.S. They are also believed to have been involved in recruiting trainees for terrorist camps in Afghanistan.

Fresh evidence has emerged suggesting that Germany has been a base for terrorists for many years now. Terrorist networks linked to the Al-Qaeda operated from Hamburg, Munich and Milan in Italy. The arrested men are to be charged with trafficking in arms and explosives. So far, over a dozen men have been arrested. The German police is cracking down on suspected terrorist cells which are thought to have overtly and covertly participated in the September 11 attacks. The German police and security agencies have experience tackling terrorist activities on their soil - the Bader Mainhoff and Red Brigade terrorist groups were active in the late Seventies.

The European Union countries are in the process of streamlining procedural methods for better co-ordination among pan-European security agencies and police. A pan-European arrest warrant is expected to become effective by the end of the year. German authorities are working on a system to profile individuals and groups according to their race, creed or ethnicity. Although such profiling is banned in some E.U. countries it is allowed in Germany. A law was passed making it legal after a spate of bombings and assassinations by the Bader Mainhoff and the Red Brigade gangs in the 1970s. The profiling method has been rarely used since then but after the recent events, the authorities feel the need to start profiling suspects on the basis of race, creed or ethnicity.

The German Government is also planning to change the law that gives special protection to clubs and groups with a religious character. This will enable German authorities to close down fundamentalist groups that it deems dangerous. The German authorities have been particularly embarrassed by the revelation that Mohammed Atta, one of the hijackers on board the plane that crashed into the World Trade Centre, was a student in Hamburg. Atta had secretly travelled to an Al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. The German authorities will soon tighten laws to crack down on suspected terrorist organisations.

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Section  : International
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