Neo-Nazi murders, film confession shock Germany

People attend a vigil for the victims of racist violence at Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, November 13, 2011.



Germany’s Interior Minister warned yesterday of a “new form of far-right terrorism” as details emerged of a grotesque film left by members of a neo-Nazi cell in eastern Germany, in which they claimed the murder of nine immigrants between 2000 and 2006.

Prosecutors said police had arrested a suspected accomplice of the group, which referred to itself in the film as the “Nationalist Socialist Underground,” and which is also thought to be behind the murder of a policewoman in 2007 and a bomb attack on a Turkish area of Cologne in 2004.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the murders were shameful for Germany.

Virulent E. Coli Strain Spreads in Germany and Puzzles Health Officials

Cucumbers from Spain were left in crates as suppliers in several European nations halted entry. By ALAN COWELL and WILLIAM NEUMAN BERLIN - An unusually lethal strain of E. coli bacteria has infected more than 1500 people in Germany, mystifying public


E.coli epidemic continues to gather pace with almost 200 new cases reported over the last 24 hours amid a bad-tempered spat between Berlin and Madrid over Spanish cucumbers. Yesterday authorities confirmed more than 1500 infections with

Radical Islamists aim to infiltrate Hamburg mosques

Radical Islamists from a shut down Hamburg mosque linked to the September 11 attacks on the United States are now trying to infiltrate other mosques in and around the German city, according to officials and Muslim leaders.

Small groups of radicals have turned up at several mosques trying to establish a new meeting place since the Taiba Mosque, where the 9/11 leader Mohammad Atta once prayed, was raided and closed by police in August, they told Reuters.

With radicals no longer grouped around one mosque near the city’s main train station, security services have stepped up their observation of Islamists around the city and Muslim associations are on the lookout for suspicious newcomers.

“There are small groups of three to five people from the former Taiba Mosque who have gone to other mosques,” said Ralf Kunz, internal affairs spokesman for the city government.

Individual radicals have turned up “at lots of mosques, both in Hamburg and the surrounding region,” he said. “They have not been able to assemble at any mosque.”

People walk past the entrance of the Taiba Mosque in Hamburg October 6, 2010.






Hamburg police shut down the Taiba Mosque, formerly known as the Al Quds Mosque, in August, saying it had links with armed Islamist groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

A so-called “Hamburg Travel Group” of 11 radicals linked to the mosque left Germany in March 2009 to fight against the US and coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Muslim organisations in the city said they had stepped up their vigilance. Schura, Hamburg’s largest Muslim group, said it had no evidence of any problem at its mosques.

But Schura head Mustafa Yoldas, referring to an ultra-conservative brand of Islam, added: “The salafis are trying to get a foothold in some other congregations. I know of two mosques where they meet and give lectures... They are and will remain a fringe group, they will never be mainstream here.”

At Ditib, a German-Turkish association linked to Ankara’s Religious Affairs Ministry, regional chairman Zekeriya Altug said his group’s structure made it harder to infiltrate.

“I know that the (Taiba Mosque) congregation has been split up and is seeking refuge elsewhere,” he said. “Our imams are university graduates who are competent to counter them.”

Radicals trying to infiltrate a congregation usually seek out small mosques with weak leadership and start meeting and preaching there, hoping to attract young Muslims.

Norbert Mueller, a German convert on Schura’s board, said weakly managed mosques did not always notice what was happening.

“These young people don’t come wearing a label saying ‘I’m from the Taiba Mosque’,” he said. “They say they want to start a youth group. But their thinking becomes obvious after a while and one realises where they come from.”

Recent reports of planned al Qaeda attacks on landmark targets in Europe have turned the spotlight back on Hamburg, a major port city where 27 per cent of the population is foreign or has an immigrant background.

One member of the “travel group” was seized by US troops in Afghanistan this summer and has revealed details of the planned attacks, intelligence sources say. That prompted the US, Britain and France to issue travel warnings in Europe.

Kunz said the “travel group” consisted of nine men and two women, who he said had little to do with the men’s radical activities. Three were now back in Hamburg under police observation, one was jailed here and one in US custody.

Some others were apparently killed in a US drone attack, but their identities have not yet been confirmed, Kunz said.

“The travel group has been broken up,” he said.

Kunz gave no details of new security measures against mosque infiltration but said: “It has created a lot more work for us.”

He said Hamburg authorities had expected Islamists to fan out to other mosques if they closed the Taiba Mosque, but shut it down anyway because it had become a magnet for radicals.

“The Taiba Mosque had a cult status,” he said. “People came from all over Germany and from abroad to pray there. We wanted to stop that.”

Multiculturalism in Germany had been a "total failure.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel joined her country's increasingly acrimonious debate about immigration over the weekend, declaring that multiculturalism in Germany had been a "total failure.

Taboo-breaking Berlin exhibition chronicles Hitler's hold over German society

The knuckle-dusters, truncheons and jackboots in the first case of a new exhibition on 'Hitler and the Germans' in Berlin sets the tone for a stark look at how German society embraced the Nazi regime in all its brutality.

While lots of memorabilia is on show, from SS and Gestapo uniforms to a sideboard from Hitler's office, the exhibition shows how all levels of German society - media, industry, the church, schools -- built up the Hitler cult in the 1930s and clung to it through World War II until defeat was imminent.

Some media have portrayed the show opening on Friday in the German Historical Museum as a taboo-breaking first exhibition on Adolf Hitler himself. But the curators are at pains to stress that their focus is on the society that created the dictator.

'Germany awake!': This Nazi flag is one of the displays at the Hitler And The Germans ¿ Nation And Crime' exhibition which has opened at the German Historical Museum

Uniforms worn by the military and Nazi party officials form part of the exhibition which is seen by some as breaking the taboo of examining how complicit German society was in the rise of Hitler

The poster on the left shows the different 'German races' and the one on the right warns of the dangers of 'inferior races' having more children than 'higher quality' ones

We don't want to focus on Hitler as a personality,' said Hans-Ulrich Thamer, curator of the exhibition subtitled 'Nation and Crime', at a media preview on Wednesday.

'We want to look at the rise of the regime, how it operated in power and how it fell, and the tremendous destructive potential that National Socialism unleashed,' he said.

The show is housed in a modern annexe behind the museum on Unter den Linden -- the boulevard that Hitler stripped of the linden trees that gave it its name - with no advertising, in deference to German law forbidding the display of Nazi symbols.

But inside the viewer is immersed in a world of propaganda ranging from cigarette packets with the swastika, complete with collectible uniform cards, to a handcart for selling the party paper, 'Voelkischer Beobachter'.

As the exhibits document the construction of the Nazi state, with its industry, autobahns and folksy celebrations of Hitler, they also reflect the growing racial hatred and discrimination.

One poster shows a mentally disabled boy beside a muscular blonde athlete and warns of the demographic dangers 'if retards have four children and the able-minded have just two'.

Then come displays of the yellow stars the Nazis forced Jews to wear and the striped concentration camp uniforms worn by some of the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust and other Nazi victims. Among them is a tiny child's uniform from the camps.

After chronicling Hitler's downfall, the show touches on the post-war discussion of Nazism in German society, noting that the top-selling news magazine Der Spiegel put Hitler on its front cover no fewer than 46 times between 1949 and 2010.

'Since the 1990s not a single year has gone by without a Hitler portrait on the cover,' the curators said.

The final exhibits mention the fascination of neo-Nazis with Hitler memorabilia and displays anti-fascist logos.

Thamer was asked about the danger the museum could lure neo-Nazis eager for a look at Hitler memorabilia. Those sort of people, he said, don't go to museums.

A poster advertising Hitler's Mein Kampf urges the public to 'Learn about Hitler through his book' and (right) a Russian anti-Hitler poster

A visitor looks at signs advertising branches of the thuggish Brownshirts, the precursor to the SS, and, top right, a sign which says 'Jews are not welcome in our area'

A cigar case, a Fuehrer pack of cards (left) and even a party decoration with a swastika. The exhibition shows how Nazi images filtered into every aspect of German society

Beer mugs with swastikas and SS cuff-links show the extent of how the party's influence reached in everyday life

Toy tin soldiers of German soldiers in action and of Hitler and Goering are also on show. The memorabilia shows how the Hitler cult permeated all levels of society

The show touches on the post-war discussion of Nazism in German society, noting that the top-selling news magazine Der Spiegel put Hitler on its front cover no fewer than 46 times between 1949 and 2010

Mosques to become bigger part of German life-Merkel

Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germans had for too long failed to grasp how immigration was changing their country and would have to get used to the sight of more mosques in their cities, according to a newspaper.

Germany, home to at least 4 million Muslims, has been divided in recent weeks by a debate over integration sparked by disparaging remarks about Muslim immigrants by an outspoken member of the country’s central bank.

Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel addresses a news conference




“Our country is going to carry on changing, and integration is also a task for the society taking up the immigrants,” Merkel told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily.

“For years we’ve been deceiving ourselves about this. Mosques, for example, are going to be a more prominent part of our cities than they were before,” she added.

The uproar sparked by the Bundesbank’s Thilo Sarrazin, who argued Turkish and Arab immigrants were failing to integrate and swamping Germany with a higher birth rate, is one of several recent prominent disputes touching on religion and integration.

Switzerland sparked international condemnation last year when it voted to impose a ban on building minarets.

Religious disputes have erupted in the United States during the past few weeks over plans to build an Islamic cultural centre close to the site of toppled World Trade Center.

Meanwhile ties between Berlin and Paris were strained this week by a terse exchange between Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy over France’s expulsion of Roma migrants.