Around fifty searches were carried out in several regions. The Islamic Center of Hamburg is particularly targeted by the authorities.
Several hundred German police officers carried out searches on Thursday in a large part of the country targeting an Islamist association suspected of supporting the Lebanese pro-Iranian movement Hezbollah, the Interior Ministry announced.
“At a time when many Jews feel particularly threatened, we do not tolerate Islamist propaganda or anti-Semitic and anti-Israel campaigns”Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in a statement.
The police operation targets the “Islamic Center of Hamburg” (IZH) and five other organizations suspected of being linked to it. All are suspected of supporting the Shiite Islamist movement Hezbollah.
Germany considers Hezbollah a “terrorist organization” and banned its activities in the country in April 2020.
The searches were carried out at 54 properties across seven regions in Germany.
The activities of the IZH aim to disseminate the “revolutionary concept” Iranian mullahs who is “suspected of being contrary to the constitutional order in Germany”adds the press release.
Concretely, the IZH association notably controls the Imam Ali mosque in Hamburg. And German domestic intelligence suspects IZH “to exert a strong influence” from there, on other mosques and associations, “going as far as a total takeover”affirmed the Ministry of the Interior.
In this movement, “we clearly observe anti-Semitic and hostile tendencies towards Israel which are also propagated in various media channels”he added.
The Hamburg authorities specified that the searches aimed to collect information with a view to banning the IZH association, which has been in the sights of the authorities for several years. Its vice-president was recently expelled from Germany.
“The sooner IZH disappears completely from Hamburg, the better and with today’s action we are one step closer.”said the regional interior minister of the city-state of Hamburg, Andy Grote, in a statement.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz promised Jews to protect them in Germany, commemorating a week ago the 85th anniversary of the Nazi Kristallnacht pogrom, in a context of resurgence of anti-Semitic acts since the start of the deadly war unleashed by the bloody attacks perpetrated on October 7 on Israeli soil by Palestinian Hamas.
Furthermore, Germany and many other countries fear a flare-up of this conflict in the Middle East, particularly in Lebanon via Hezbollah.
There have already been daily exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israel in the border area between the two countries since the start of the war.
