German security chiefs: terrorist threat on rise

Jul 22, 2007, 10:55 GMT

Berlin - German interior officials, who are seeking new powers to use black arts on the internet, warned in interviews published Sunday that the threat from terrorism was growing.

'There are a lot of actual offences, including those of recent days, that indicate Germany has moved into the cross-hairs of the international terrorists,' said Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble in an interview with the newspaper BZ am Sonntag.

His top aide, state secretary August Hanning, told another Sunday newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, that Germany was at risk because German-based Islamists were being trained at al-Qaeda camps in Pakistan.

'We have a range of signs that al-Qaeda has Germany and German operations such as embassies in its sights,' Hanning was quoted saying in an article about recent arrests in Pakistan of seven German-domiciled radicals.

The paper said Pakistan was likely in the next few weeks to deport the men, who had been trained in Qaeda camps with a view to returning to Germany, adding that three such trainees had returned to Germany last month but could not be arrested.

'We must assume that those who have come back from Afghanistan are planning attacks,' Hanning said.

Both officials appealed for legislative permission to infiltrate suspects' home computers via the internet to search for evidence.

Police computer specialists hope to use software viruses just like those used by criminal computer saboteurs. Hanning said this did not mean a Big Brother state, since judges would supervise such break- ins.

Juergen Kuri, an author on software at the specialist magazine CT told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa in an interview that computers were not so vulnerable and covert surveillance was 'technically very difficult' to do.

'If the computer owner uses anti-virus and firewall programs, (the police) will find it very hard to get around them,' he warned.