Patterns of Global Terrorism 2000 - Germany
- Author: Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism
- Document source:
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Date:
30 April 2001
Extreme rightwing violence against foreign nationals in Germany increased in 2000 and became a major political issue. Interior ministers from the German states met in November to address the problem and recommended the federal authorities adopt control measures, including establishing databases to track rightwing and leftwing extremists.
German officials detected no revival of organized extreme leftwing terrorist activity in 2000. Authorities sought several former members of the Red Army Faction (RAF), which was dissolved in 1998, and continued to prosecute former RAF members in court. Johannes Weinreich, a former RAF member and lieutenant to Carlos the Jackal, was convicted in January of committing murder and attempted murder during an attack in 1983 on a French cultural center in then-West Berlin. In November, RAF member Andrea Klump went on trial on charges of participation in a failed attack on the NATO base at Rota, Spain, in 1988. In December, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer testified at the trial of former acquaintance Hans-Joachim Klein, who was charged with three murders in connection with the 1975 attack in Vienna on petroleum ministers from OPEC states by "Carlos"-led terrorists.
The courts convicted Metin Kaplan, leader of the violent Turkish Islamist group Kalifatstaat, and sentenced him to four years in prison for publicly calling for the death of a rival. The trial of five defendants accused of the 1986 Libyan-sponsored bombing against the Labelle Discotheque, which killed two US servicemen, continued to progress slowly. The 1993 ban on the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and its affiliates remained in effect. The PKK ceased to conduct violent demonstrations in 2000, following the seizure of the group's leader Ocalan.
Germany continued to cooperate multilaterally and bilaterally – notably with the United States – to combat terrorism. In 2000, German authorities arrested and extradited to the United States a suspect in the bombings in 1998 of the US embassies in East Africa.
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