The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Thomas de Maiziere

  • G20 summit: Germany expects 8,000 violent protesters in Hamburg

    G20 summit: Germany expects 8,000 violent protesters in Hamburg

    German security forces expect some 8,000 violent protesters to converge on the northern city of Hamburg where Chancellor Angela Merkel will host leaders of the G20 leading economies.

    Interior Minister said on Tuesday that some 20,000 police officers will secure the Friday and Saturday event in Germany’s second-largest city where anti-capitalist protesters are expected to riot.

    NAN reports that on June 20, German police unveiled a mass detention centre built in anticipation of protests against the summit.

    Authorities say roughly 8,000 of those are prepared to use violence.

    The 11,000-square-metre centre in Hamburg’s southern Harburg district has 70 group cells and 50 single cells that can hold as many as 400 detainees, according to police spokesman Timo Zill.

    A supermarket once stood at the location, which was most recently used as refugee accommodation, Zill said.

    Refurbishing the venue as a mass detention centre was meant to cost three million euros (3.4 billion dollars), but Zill said it remained to be seen whether the project would exceed the budget.

  • German minister wants police overhaul after Christmas market attack

    German minister wants police overhaul after Christmas market attack

    Germany must grant federal police more powers to counter threats like terrorism and cyber attacks, Interior Minister, Thomas de Maiziere, said on Tuesday, two weeks after a failed asylum seeker rammed a truck into a Christmas market and killed 12 people.

    In his most detailed response yet to the Dec. 19 attack, de Maiziere said Germany lacked laws that other countries had, and police and intelligence bodies were too fragmented.

    “Our state must be better prepared for difficult times than it has been,” de Maiziere said at the start of an election year in which immigration and security will be at the top of the political agenda.

    “The Federal Government needs to be able to steer all security authorities where the central government and the states work together on national security,” he wrote.

    Each of the 16 federal states has its own police force and intelligence agency, and the country’s worst attack in more than 35 years has reignited debate about how best to prevent information from falling between the cracks.

    After the Christmas market attack, it emerged that Tunisian suspect Anis Amri had spent nearly a year and a half in Germany, using various names and moving between different parts of the country despite being identified as a security threat.

    For several days he evaded an intensive search, crossing three international borders before being shot dead in Italy.

    De Maiziere said the federal police agency should lead national manhunts, and a discussion about centralising intelligence agencies was needed.

    Better coordination was also required to monitor several hundred individuals believed to pose a threat, including many who have returned from Syria and Iraq.

    The minister said Germans should not fear to install more video cameras in public places to help prevent and solve crimes.

    Germans have an aversion to such measures after mass snooping under the communist East German Stasi and the Nazis.

    He also said failed asylum seekers who were viewed as a danger should be held until they could be deported.

    Amri, whose attack was claimed by Islamic State, was due to be sent home

     

  • Germany arrests three ‘on IS mission’

    Three Syrian men have been arrested in Germany on suspicion of being sent by so-called Islamic State (IS) to launch attacks.

    The men – aged between 17 and 26 – were detained after a series of pre-dawn raids in the states of Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony on Tuesday, the BBC reports.

    Later, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told journalists the suspects may have had links to the men who attacked Paris in November last year.

    He called the three a sleeper cell.

    The Federal Public Prosecutor’s office has said no concrete missions or orders have so far been found, despite the seizure of “extensive material.”

    The men – identified only as Mahir al-H, 17, Ibrahim M, 18, and Mohamed A, 26 – are said to have travelled through Turkey and Greece on false passports.

    Investigators believe they had volunteered for the alleged mission, and that the 17-year-old had been trained in handling weapons and explosives in Raqqa, IS’s stronghold in Syria.

    They received fake passports, mobile phones loaded with a pre-installed communication programme and four-figure cash sums in United States dollars.

    The men were arrested when 200 police and security officers raided six locations, including three refugee shelters.

  • German spies want more money

    German spies want more money

    THE discovery of US spies in Germany’s intelligence service and Defence Ministry has sparked outrage. Now German spies are calling for a boost in funds and staff directed toward counterintelligence.

    When it comes to cases of espionage on German soil, officials in the secret service and the politicians responsible for overseeing them automatically start using words like “counterintelligence” and “protection.”

    “Effective protection against attacks on our communication, as well as effective counterintelligence, are essential for our strong democracy,” said German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere in a statement responding to recent revelations of alleged spying in Germany.

    Within a matter of days, an employee in Germany’s Defence Ministry and an official from the foreign intelligence body, the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), were unmasked as having provided information to US spies. Then the German government demanded the top CIA official in the US embassy in Germany leave the country.

    Bernd Schmidbauer, who worked as a federal intelligence service coordinator between 1991 and 1998, also used the word “counterintelligence” frequently.

    “Counterintelligence, counterintelligence, and more counterintelligence. Only then can you be strong,” said Schmidbauer in an interview with DW. But such activities require money and well-trained staff, the 75-year-old added.

    “Only then would it mean that not everyone is free to mess around in our backyard,” he said. “It’s not about friends or foes, it is only a matter of national interests.”