1,170 Muslim homes raided
01 November 2003
In December, on the very same day that "terrorist suspect" Abdelghani Mzoudi, who is being tried in Hamburg in relation to the 11 September attacks in the USA was released on bail for a lack of evidence, 5,500 police officers raided 1,170 Muslim homes. Those raided were alleged to be connected to the Kalifatstaat (Caliphat State) organisation, which was proscribed in 2001. Police officers refused to explain why they suspected that those arrested were part of the organisation.
Mzoudi released
On the day of the largest ever police raid in post-war Germany, the Bundeskriminalamt (Federal Crime Police Office) sent a fax to the Hamburg court which stated that they had no evidence of Mzoudi's involvement in the 11 September attacks. The "evidence" now suggests that only the three Hamburg-based suicide hijackers (Mohammed Atta, Marwan Alshehhi and Siad Jarrah) and Ramzi Binalshibh, the alleged al-Qaida liaison currently in US custody, had been involved. Mzoudi has been in custody for 14 months and standing trial for the last four months on 3,066 counts of manslaughter and membership of a terrorist organisation. The trial is continuing and the prosecution has appealed against his release.
The trial has been marked by police attempts to keep their sources secret, although it is commonly known that the incriminating evidence comes from the fourth member of the "Hamburg terrorist cell", Ramzi Binalshibh, who was arrested in Pakistan in September 2002. Binalshibh had shared a flat in Hamburg with Mohammed Atta, the suspected ringleader of the suicide hijackers. The US authorities and German Bundeskriminalamt are keeping the transcripts of the source's interrogations secret. However, as presiding judge Klaus Rühle's statement said:
The judges have many questions about the credibility of this information, but there is no possibility to verify Binalshibh's statements...We have no doubt that Ramzi Binalshibh is the witness and assume he was intensely interrogated about the attacks. There is a serious possibility that (Mzoudi) was kept away from all knowledge of the plot. If there is any doubt of his innocence he has to be released.
After the decision to release Mzoudi the lawyers of Mounir El Motassadeq, who was sentenced on 19 February for assisting murder in more than 3,000 cases and was jailed for 15 years, asked for his conviction to be quashed. His appeal is expected to be heard at the Supreme Court on 29 January next year.
A "terrorist" newspaper
The Interior Minister, Otto Schily, banned
Kalifatstaat on grounds of its unconstitutionality in December 2001. Its leader (caliph) Metin Kaplan was based in Cologne until, in November 2000, he was jailed for four years for incitement to murder. He had demanded that "if a second caliph rises he should be beheaded" and one year later a religious rival was shot dead by unknown people. He was released in May this year and attempts to deport him to Turkey failed when the Cologne administrative court ruled that Turkey's treatment of the self-declared caliph would violate international obligations. The court thought that there was a possibility that Turkey, which has lodged an extradition request for Kaplan for treason, could force him to give statements under police duress. Turkey also has the death penalty.
The timing and scale of December's police raids in thirteen of Germany's sixteen states is extraordinary. The homes raided were people who were said to support the Kalifatstaat organisation by subscribing to its newspaper Beklenen Asr-I Saadet, which is printed in Holland. The prosecution has initiated investigations into four former members for membership of a terrorist organisation. According to a prosecution spokeswoman, the raid in Braunschweig and Peine in Lower Saxony were intended to uncover evidence to support these allegations, but only one man was arrested for possession of a pistol and knives.
Criticisms of the police raids, w