Weapons, money and file storage are seized during searches in several federal states. The Islamist suspects are said to have acted "very conspiratorially". Baden-Württemberg was also affected by the action against the "Caliphate State".
Mainz/Mannheim (dpa/lsw) - In connection with a raid against members of the banned "Caliphatic State" association, the Karlsruhe public prosecutor's office had ten properties searched on Tuesday. According to a spokesman, these are located in Mannheim, Weinheim (Rhein-Neckar district) and in Viernheim in Hesse. Meetings of the association are said to have taken place in Weinheim, among other places. People from Viernheim also came there, the spokesman explained the cross-border responsibility.
No one was arrested here, he said. It is about the suspicion of violating a ban on associations. Eight suspects are affected by the Karlsruhe investigation.
The "Caliphate State" is an Islamist organization led by a self-proclaimed "Caliph of Cologne". According to the investigators, its goal is to set up an Islamic state that rejects democratic and rule-of-law principles on the basis of the Koran as the constitution and Sharia as the only applicable law. According to the public prosecutor's office, the association was first founded in 1984 under a different name in Cologne and was banned by the Federal Ministry of the Interior in 2001.
The action of the authorities ran in six federal states under the leadership of the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) Rhineland-Palatinate. Three men were arrested. One of them is said to be the son of the leader of the organization, Metin Kaplan, who was deported to Turkey in 2004, the State Criminal Police Office said on Tuesday in Mainz. The police officers seized firearms, cutting and thrusting weapons such as sabers, as well as numerous data storage devices and hundreds of thousands of euros.
The focus of the investigation is a mosque association in Bad Kreuznach, Rhineland-Palatinate. There is an urgent suspicion that the ideology of the "caliphate state" is being spread within the association in sermons and through the sale of writings and other means of propaganda and that the organizational structure of the association is being maintained, the LKA reported.
Baden-Württemberg Interior Minister Thomas Strobl (CDU) said: "The threat posed by Islamist terror has not lost any of its danger." Even if the topic is no longer on many people's agendas, the security authorities continue to pay the utmost attention to the threat posed by Islamism. "Nobody should have the slightest doubt that we are not keeping a watchful eye on all those who reject our democratic and constitutional principles," said Strobl. The activities of the "caliphate state" in particular must be nipped in the bud.
