Hamburg Senator of the Interior: IZH's time "clearly expired"
Hamburg's Interior Senator Andy Grote has described the nationwide raids against the Islamic Center Hamburg (IZH) and its affiliated institutions in seven federal states as a "hard blow". The IZH's time had "clearly run out", the SPD politician said on Thursday morning. "The sooner the IZH as a whole disappears from Hamburg, the better. Today brings us a whole lot closer to that."
The searches made it clear that the banning procedure against the center, which has been classified as Islamist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution for many years, is well advanced. The Hamburg Office for the Protection of the Constitution had always pointed out the extremist orientation of the IZH "and kept up the pressure", said Grote. "I am very pleased that the Federal Ministry of the Interior is pursuing the banning procedure with great determination and I assume that this procedure will now be brought to a consistent conclusion and the IZH will be closed in a timely manner."
According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, the police searched 54 properties in seven federal states on Thursday morning in connection with investigations into the IHZ. The focus was on Hamburg, where the center operates the Blue Mosque on the Alster.
The police's involvement in the raids against the IZH underscores the seriousness of the extremist activities associated with the center. The prolonged absence of the IZH will likely require increased police vigilance to prevent the rise of similar extremist groups in Hamburg.
Source: www.dpa.com
