Germany beefs up security after video threat of attacks

Security has been stepped up for employees of a German magazine and for members of a small far-right party after a known terrorist called for them to be killed in a video online, officials said Tuesday. The video surfaced May 18 on YouTube after street clashes between an ultraconservative Muslim group and the far-right Pro NRW party in Bonn and Solingen, in western Germany. Three security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said they have no specific evidence that attacks are being planned in the wake of the video. But they said they worry it could inspire a lone-wolf type attacker like Arid Uka, an Islamic extremist who killed two U.S. airmen at Frankfurt airport last year after being spurred to action in part by a YouTube video preaching jihad, or holy war. “The danger is very real,” said one official of the threat. In the Bonn skirmish on May 5, some 110 Salafist protesters were arrested after they started attacking police with stones and bottles. The police were trying to keep them away from about 30 Pro NRW supporters. Twenty-nine police officers were injured; two were hospitalized with stab wounds. The rally by the marginal anti-immigration Pro NRW party was one of several it held around North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, ahead of a May 13 state election. Pro NRW won only 1.5 percent of the vote, far short of the score needed to win seats in the state legislature. The Salafist protesters were upset by Pro NRW’s anti-Islam signs, particularly those showing the cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad that provoked outrage in 2005 when they were first printed in a Danish newspaper. Strict Muslims oppose any depiction of their prophet. In the video, Bonn-born Yassin Chouka, who is believed to be with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, calls on Muslims to kill Pro NRW members. Speaking in fluent German, Chouka urges the Salafists to move away from street confrontations where the risk of being arrested is too great. He instead tells them to target Pro NRW members at their homes and workplaces, “at best under cover of darkness.” “We should kill all the members of Pro NRW,” he said. He also said employees of Der Spiegel – which has printed photos of the demonstrations showing the Prophet Mohammad signs – and others in the media should be targeted. “Der Spiegel, which is linked to the Jews, and other German media have insulted the Prophet,” he said in the audio message, played with a picture of the street fights in the background. As a result of the video, authorities have taken security measures at Der Spiegel’s Hamburg headquarters and also in Berlin, the officials said without giving more specific details. In addition, at least one of the Pro NRW members who has been identified by name in pictures has been assigned a security detail. Particularly alarming was the call in the video to track down individuals – an escalation from general non-specific calls for attacks by jihadi groups online. “That is something we have not yet seen,” said another of the officials. Meanwhile, the head of Germany’s intelligence service said the country could be target of an Islamist attack similar to those carried out by a gunman in France two months ago. Intelligence chief Heinz Fromm’s comments were quoted in an interview with the top-selling Bild daily Tuesday. “The danger for Germany has unfortunately not decreased. And it is not by any means abstract. An attack like in France in March ... is also conceivable here,” Fromm told Bild, adding that gunman Mohamed Merah had had contact with Salafists before his shooting spree. Merah, a Frenchman of Algerian origin, killed seven people – three soldiers, three Jewish children and a rabbi – before being shot dead by elite French police commandos in Toulouse on March 22. He had said Al-Qaeda inspired him to kill. Fromm cited a video made by a Berlin-based Salafist, a former rapper known as Denis C., which calls for ‘holy war’ and praises Merah and the late Osama bin Laden. “We must take [this video] seriously. It could well be that this video is taken as an inducement for attacks,” he said. “With their intensive propaganda over the Internet, in the streets, in mosques and also at so-called Islam seminars, Salafist preachers are reaching especially young people who are more sensitive to this ideology,” said Fromm, who heads Germany’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution. “Almost all Islamist terrorists from Germany have been radicalized in this way,” said Fromm. Germany’s intelligence and security agencies have been increasingly monitoring the actions of the Salafists, who number some 4,000 in Germany, in recent months. Overall, the officials said some 130 radical Muslims in Germany are known to authorities as being potentially violent, of whom 24 are part of the Salafist movement.