Posted on 01/15/2003 2:41:46 AM PST by knighthawk
BERLIN - Germany's top security official on Wednesday outlawed an Islamic organization, Hizb ut-Tahrir, which he accused of extremism and spreading anti-Semitic propaganda in universities.
Interior Minister Otto Schily said premises across the country had been searched overnight in connection with the ban. He did not comment on the outcome, but his ministry said that 25 buildings were searched.
"The organization is distinguished by the fact that it is active in universities with anti-Semitic slogans," Schily told Germany's ARD television, adding that the group — whose name translates as the Liberation party — had long been under observation by German authorities.
The Interior Ministry said the group advocated the destruction of Israel and called for the killing of Jews. In a statement, it cited an event at Berlin's Technical University last October at which a speaker made anti-Semitic remarks and urged the introduction of a caliphate, or strict Islamic state, in Muslim countries.
In November, federal authorities raided 27 apartments belonging to members of sympathizers of the Hizb ut-Tahrir across Germany on suspicion they were founding a radical Islamic organization. No arrests were made.
"We have not yet been able to find recognizable organizational structures," Schily said Wednesday. "We have to assume that essentially they have their organizational base aboard."
Following the November raids, Hizb ut-Tahrir sharply rejected accusations of extremism, saying its aim is to restore the "Islamic way of life" in the Muslim world and that it considers violence and armed struggle to achieve that aim a violation of Islamic law. Representatives of the group could not immediately be reached for comment on the new ban.
The ban was imposed under legislation introduced after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States that allows German authorities to outlaw foreign-based extremist groups, the ministry said.
The party was formed in Jordan in 1953 by Taqi Eddin al-Nabahani, a Palestinian who died in unclear circumstances in the Palestinian territories in 1978. Egyptian authorities outlawed the group in 1974 after blaming it for an attempted coup.
The current leader is the Palestinian Abdul-Kaddim Zalloum, whose whereabouts are unknown.
Twenty-six alleged Islamic militants, including three Britons, are currently on trial in a state security court in Egypt, charged with trying to revive the Liberation party.
Three of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers and several other suspected plotters lived and studied in Hamburg, Germany, and authorities moved quickly after the attacks to tighten anti-terror legislation.
Germany loosened legal protections for religious groups — allowing the government to ban in late 2001 the Caliphate State organization run by Turkish militant Muhammed Metin Kaplan, which openly calls for the overthrow of Turkey's secular government and its replacement with an Islamic state.
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