Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Terrorism in Germany
Summary
Germany has experienced significant terrorism in its history, particularly during the Weimar Republic and during the Cold War, carried out by far-left and far-right German groups as well as by foreign terrorist organisations.
In recent years, far-left, far-right and Islamist extremist violence have resurged, and groups have been suspected of terrorism or terrorist plans.
Germany's loss in the First World War resulted in a chaotic situation, with multiple far-left and far-right organisations attempting to seize power. Both the far left and the far right organised their own militias, and carried out assassinations. For example, the Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau was assassinated in 1922 by a far-right group. Members of the Communist Party of Germany assassinated police captains Paul Anlauf and Franz Lenck in Berlin in 1931.
Turkish and Kurdish Islamist groups are also active in Germany. Political scientist Guido Steinberg stated that many top leaders of Islamist organizations in Turkey fled to Germany in the 2000s, and that the Turkish (Kurdish) Hezbollah has also "left an imprint on Turkish Kurds in Germany." Also many Kurds from Iraq (there are about 50,000 to 80,000 Iraqi Kurds in Germany) financially supported Kurdish-Islamist groups like Ansar al-Islam. Many Islamists in Germany are ethnic Kurds (Iraqi and Turkish Kurds) or Turks. Before 2006, the German Islamist scene was dominated by Iraqi Kurds and Palestinians, but since 2006 Kurds from Turkey and Turks are dominant.
According to a research conducted by the Abba Eban Institute as part of an initiative called Janus Initiative, Shiite clans in Germany are involved in organized crime and are specifically supporting Hezbollah.
In 2015, 11 verdicts concerning jihadist terrorism related offences were issued by German courts. In 2016, 28 verdicts for jihadist terrorism related offences were delivered. In 2017 there were 27 verdicts.
Almost all known terrorist networks and individuals in Germany have links to Salafism, an ultra-conservative Islamic ideology.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.