Posted on 09/08/2007 4:00:04 PM PDT by NCjim
BERLIN — After thwarting what might have become a "massive" attack on American installations, German authorities will review ways to fight homegrown terrorists, including a proposal to allow Internet spying on all German converts to Islam.
The search for seven other suspected members of a German cell of the Pakistan-based Islamic Jihad Union continued into Thursday night, with investigators saying only that they knew who they were seeking.
Anti-terror police arrested three men in a village in central Germany Tuesday, outside a vacation cabin where they were suspected of building a bomb. Germans were shocked to learn that two of the alleged bombers were native-born and had common German names, Fritz and Daniel. All three were unemployed and living on German government benefits, but other details are sketchy.
Fritz came from an upper middle class background, and German media reported that he converted to Islam about 10 years ago. His mother was a doctor, his father owned a successful business, and he's married and attends a technical college in Ulm.
"Daniel", who like Fritz hasn't been further identified, was known for angering his neighbors in Saarbruecken by praying loudly every three hours, but little else is know about him or "Adem", the Turkish-born third suspect.
This was "something new, and not in a good way," said Col. Christopher Langdon of London's International Institute for Strategic Studies. They "came from the white German population. They were very traditional German residents who converted and radicalized. These bombers were not Pakistani or Moroccan. That is raising eyebrows."
Anti-terror forces had been concerned primarily with first or second generation Muslim immigrants — not white Europeans.
Guenther Beckstein, the interior minister in the German state of Bavaria and a conservative leader of the southern wing of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Party, has called for a new law authorizing online surveillance of Islamic converts.
"Germans converting to Islam should be watched because they tend to show particular fanaticism in order to prove worthy of their new religion," he said Thursday.
The number is growing, according to the German Islam archive. In the last decade, only about 300 Germans each year converted to Islam. But in 2005, the number rose to 1,000, and it jumped to 4,000 in 2006.
As shocked as they were by the arrests, the idea of spying on other Germans unnerves many in civil-rights minded Germany, where government surveillance recalls memories of Adolf Hitler.
Gisela Piltz, a Liberal Party member of parliament, said she thinks it unwise to infringe on civil liberties so soon. She noted that while it was a shock to hear of a suspected Islamic terrorist named Fritz, it also was a shock this summer to hear of alleged terrorist doctors in England and Scotland.
"There is no pattern, and while we were perhaps the first to be attacked by Islamic terrorists from our native populations, it was only a matter of time. Terrorists are not poor, they are not stupid, and they do not want to get caught."
Karl-Heinz Kamp, a terrorism expert at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a right-of-center research center in Berlin, said the political debate on civil liberties versus security shouldn't be framed by a single plot.
"The bigger lesson here, of course, is that Germans are now an international terrorism target," he said. "That their names are Fritz and Daniel is shocking, but only means that the known spectrum of terrorists has now increased."
This week in Copenhagen, Danish authorities arrested nine people on charges of plotting terror attacks, and Kamp and other terrorism experts believe the frequency of attacks in Europe is increasing.
Magnus Ranstorp, Chief Scientist for the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish National Defense College, said that while security forces don't release information on all thwarted attacks, there are known to have been at least 40 and perhaps has many as 50 since Sept. 11, 2001.
"This is what we can expect for the future: The attack plots are going to come fast and furious," he said. "And, as is clear in both these attacks, they're operating in new vistas. Terrorism in Europe is a part of life now."
what took so long?
Pehaps their previous experience with Jews gave them a pause?
“Germany considers increased spying on Muslims”
Considers??
Their efforts should be in freakin’ overdrive!
Like jews behaved like these current muslim animals.
people are sheep, scare them and many will cave easily
i sure hope not.
Germany considers increased spying on Muslims."
If I had a cottonmouth in my living room, I'd spy on it too.
Converting to islam seems kind of like deciding you like to eat sand. About as stupid as it gets.
I call it Freedomism.
Maybe. I don’t however, see the situations as even remotely similar. Were Jews threatening the destruction of Germany, or any other country at that time? Were Jews trying to convert the country? Was a large segment of the Jewish population in favor of suicide bombing, advocating it as a legitimate means of obtaining political and religious goals? Actually, as you probably know, there was Islamic participation in the Holocaust (contrary to what that nutcase bin Laden, or whoever it was, said on tape).
More like deciding you like to eat poop!
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Germany considers increased spying on Muslims
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In related news, people in rain consider using umbrellas. Film at eleven.
I think Ann Coulter had a plan
Or that Fritz and Daniel could easily show up in NY and not be immediately profiled.
How about not allowing muslims into Western countries to begin with? And those that are here, why not send them packing? Then there wouldn’t be any problems with muslims attacking us, would there? Mass exodus of unwanted peoples, as ugly as that sounds (think of the American Indian being forced to reservations in our own checkered pasts)is not out of the question, is it? An orderly, safe transfer isn’t such a bad idea is it? Especially since they really have no intention of assimilation and would prefer to install their own twisted, hateful systems on the rest of us. Open minded, fair minded, that works with people who respect you equally or would at least be willing to reason; they do not. Read their Koran and other related writings, nothing but disdain and subjection to non-muslims. Read their history, same thing, and violent, too.
“If we were really serious in this country we would not allow Islamic recruitment in prisons.”
Islam should be redesignated as a political ideology.
....is there a democratic party in Germany?
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