No intervention possible during Taliban appearance in mosque
North Rhine-Westphalia's Interior Minister has expressed his surprise at the uproar from the German government over the appearance of an Afghan Taliban official in a mosque in Cologne. "We could not have intervened in this case and prevented the appearance, even if we had wanted to," he said on Monday.
The Federal Public Prosecutor General does not consider the Taliban to be a terrorist organization, said Reul. Furthermore, the Taliban are not subject to a ban on activities in Germany under the Associations Act, i.e. they are prohibited. "These assessments are the responsibility of the federal authorities," he said. The "whole great horror from federal politics - to me it sometimes seems like theater, because the problem is homemade."
An incident like the one in Cologne could therefore happen again and again. "It can't be prevented," said Reul. According to current knowledge, there were no criminally relevant statements made there. However, security authorities can only act on the basis of criminal law and to avert danger, which is currently not the case.
The background to this is a controversial appearance by a high-ranking Taliban official at the Ditib mosque in Cologne last week, which sparked outrage. Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser, for example, strongly criticized the event, saying that the appearance of the Taliban representative was completely unacceptable and should be strongly condemned and that no one should offer radical Islamists a stage in Germany. The Federal Foreign Office identified the man as Abdul Bari Omar. He is the head of the Afghan Food and Drug Authority. Ditib distanced itself from the appearance.
Despite the criticism from federal politics, the Taliban's appearance in the Cologne mosque illustrates the challenge of preventing extremist figures from speaking in public spaces, given the lack of legal restrictions. This situation underscores the need for a nuanced approach in dealing with complex political issues associated with extremism.
Source: www.dpa.com
