German Police Raid Extremists for Intelligence (Dispatch)
Video Transcript:
Video Transcript
German police forces conducted raids on around 70 locations all over Germany in an effort to clamp down on extremist Islamists. The raids come after several physical and verbal threats to German public security during the month of May. The broad sweep of the raids indicate that it was intended to be proactive and disruptive rather than a response to evidence of a threat.
Around 850 German police officers raided over 70 residences, mosques and meeting spaces in seven states across Germany the morning of June 14. Police seized computers, cell phones, videos and other documents in an effort to assess whether there is enough evidence to ban two radical Islamist organizations that are under investigation. While the raids were happening, the German interior minster announced that he had banned Millatu Ibrahim -- a radical German Islamist group that sought the adoption of Sharia law over German law.
The timing of this morning's raids is not surprising. Islamist groups clashed with police during several far-right political demonstrations held outside mosques in May in the Bonn region. The anti-Islamic Pro-NRW Party provoked the Islamist response during demonstrations by displaying some of the infamous Mohammad cartoons outside conservative mosques. Ensuing scuffles led to injured police and dozens of arrests. The series of provocations and violent clashes culminated in a video from Bonn-born Yassin Chouka, who encouraged German Islamists to avoid the streets and conduct personal attacks against the right-wing German political demonstrators instead. He also called for attacks against German news magazine Der Spiegel for publishing Mohammad cartoons.
Authorities suspect that Yassin Chouka is hiding out in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, so he is out of German police reach for now. The June 14 raids don't appear to be targeting any specific person or threat in the making. The German interior minister was fairly explicit in explaining that the police were seeking clues rather than following up on them. This police tactic, known as "shaking the branches," is fairly common and is intended to disrupt a group's activities and intimidate its members into abandoning any violent plots in the works. The police don't appear to have known of any specific plots, but given the precedent of violent protests and Yassin Chouka's appeal for more targeted attacks, these raids were conducted out of a sense of prevention.
There will almost certainly be follow up actions from these raids. Another intention during actions like this is to find more evidence that police can use to identify and prosecute key members of the radical groups in order to disorganize and discourage them from engaging in violence. However, one of the risks associated with raids like this is that they tend to provoke the targeted group. It may cause more brazen members to act out with violence. German police are hoping that the raids yield enough actionable intelligence to identify and arrest such members before they can act.
