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| Europe |
| German Police Search Mosque, Homes |
| 2005-11-24 |
| Police and prosecutors searched a mosque and 22 homes Wednesday in southern Germany as part of an investigation into an outlawed Islamic group accused of spawning terrorists. Bavarian police were investigating 21 people in connection with the pre-dawn raids near the towns of Ingolstadt and Schwabach, police spokesman Heinz Rindlbacher said. Police said they could not immediately report arrests or the results of the searches due to the ongoing investigation. Authorities said the suspects may have been continuing the activities of Hilafet Devleti, or Caliphate State, which was outlawed in December 2001 under anti-terrorism powers put in place after the Sept. 11 attacks. The Cologne-based Caliphate State, led by Turkish-born Muhammed Metin Kaplan, had openly called for the overthrow of Turkey's secular government and its replacement with an Islamic state. Former Interior Minister Otto Schily described the group, which had more than 1,000 members in Germany, as "a breeding ground for Islamic terrorists" that spread anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli rhetoric. Kaplan served a four-year prison sentence in Germany for incitement in the 1997 killing of a rival cleric in Berlin. He was extradited last year to Turkey, where he was sentenced to life in prison for masterminding a failed 1998 plot to crash an airplane into the mausoleum of modern Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The ban on Caliphate State covered a number of affiliates, including one that was shut down in Ingolstadt. Former members rented the premises again early in 2003, saying it would be used for prayer, Rindlbacher said. "In the course of the investigation, suspicion has hardened against 21 persons from the region that they are members of a forbidden organization or that they support its continuation," he said. |
| Posted by:Fred |