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Re-print of Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ takes Germany by storm

A copy of the book 'Hitler, Mein Kampf. A Critical Edition' is displayed for media prior to a news conference in Munich, Germany

BERLIN (Reuters) – Sales of Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” have soared since a special edition of the Nazi leader’s political treatise went on sale in Germany a year ago, the German publisher has said.

The book outlines Hitler’s ideology that formed the basis for Nazism and sets out his hatred of Jews, which led to the Holocaust.

The new edition is the first reprint since World War Two, released last January after a 70-year copyright on the text expired at the end of 2015. It includes explanatory sections and some 3,500 annotations, and has sold 85,000 copies to the surprise of its publishers.

“These sales figures have taken us by storm,” Andreas Wirsching, who heads up the publishers, the Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ) told German news agency dpa.

“No-one could really have expected them,” he added.

Hitler wrote “Mein Kampf”, which translates as “My Struggle” in English, between 1924 and 1926. It was banned by the Allies at the end of World War Two.

Hitler wrote most of the first, highly autobiographical, volume while incarcerated in Landsberg prison after his failed Munich coup attempt in 1923. After his release, he wrote much of the second volume at his mountain retreat near Berchtesgaden.

A bestseller after he became chancellor in 1933, “Mein Kampf” had by 1945 sold 12 million copies and been translated into 18 languages.

(Writing by Paul Carrel; editing by Richard Lough)

German police hunt Tunisian asylum-seeker over Christmas market attack

Candles burn at a Christmas market at Breitscheidplatz in Berlin, Germany, December 20, 2016, to commemorate the 12 victims of a truck that ploughed into the crowded market.

By Paul Carrel and Matthias Inverardi

BERLIN/DUESSELDORF (Reuters) – German police are looking for an asylum-seeker from Tunisia after finding an identity document under the driver’s seat of a truck that plowed into a Berlin Christmas market and killed 12 people, officials and security sources said on Wednesday.

Ralf Jaeger, interior minister of the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), said the man appeared to have arrived in Germany in July 2015 and his asylum application had been rejected.

He seemed to have used different names and had been identified by security agencies as being in contact with an Islamist network. The man had mainly lived in Berlin since February, but was recently in NRW, Jaeger said.

The man had been considered a potential threat by security authorities since November. After being turned down for asylum, he should have been deported but could not be returned to Tunisia because his documents were missing, added Jaeger.

The new details added to a growing list of questions about whether security authorities missed opportunities to prevent the attack, in which a 25-tonne truck mowed down a crowd of shoppers and smashed through wooden huts selling gifts, mulled wine and sausages. It was the deadliest attack on German soil since 1980.

Christmas markets have been a known potential target for Islamist militants since at least 2000, when authorities thwarted a plot to attack one in Strasbourg, France. And the modus operandi in Berlin was identical to that of a Bastille Day attack in the French city of Nice in July, when a Tunisian-born man rammed a lorry through a seaside crowd and killed 86 people.

Security sources said the ID found by the Berlin investigators was in the name of Anis A., born in the southern Tunisian city of Tataouine in 1992. By convention, suspects in Germany are identified by the first name and initial.

A spokesperson for Tunisia’s foreign ministry said it was trying to verify that information.

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said a Europe-wide manhunt for the suspect had been underway since midnight.

The Rheinische Post newspaper said police had begun searching a shelter for migrants in western Germany where the man was believed to have lived.

SYMBOLIC TARGET

The pre-Christmas carnage at a symbolic Berlin site – under the ruined spire of a church bombed in World War Two – has shocked Germans and prompted security reviews across Europe, already on high alert after attacks this year in Belgium and France.

The possible – though unproven – involvement of a migrant or refugee has revived a bitter debate about security and immigration, with Chancellor Angela Merkel facing calls to clamp down after allowing more than a million newcomers into Germany in the past two years.

Merkel, who will run for a fourth term next year, has said it would be particularly repugnant if a refugee seeking protection in Germany was the perpetrator.

Police initially arrested a Pakistani asylum-seeker near the scene, but released him without charge on Tuesday. Authorities have warned that the attacker is on the run and may be armed. It is not clear if the perpetrator was acting alone or with others.

The Polish driver of the hijacked truck was found shot dead in the cabin of the vehicle. Bild newspaper reported that he was alive until the attack took place.

It quoted an investigator as saying there must have been a struggle with the attacker, who may have been injured.

ISLAMIC STATE CLAIM

Islamic State has claimed responsibility, as it did for the Nice attack.

The Passauer Neue Presse newspaper quoted the head of the group of interior ministers from Germany’s 16 federal states, Klaus Bouillon, as saying tougher security measures were needed.

“We want to raise the police presence and strengthen the protection of Christmas markets. We will have more patrols. Officers will have machine guns. We want to make access to markets more difficult, with vehicles parked across them,” Bouillon told the paper.

Some politicians have blamed Merkel’s open-door migrant policy for making such attacks more likely. The anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has gained support in the last two years as the chancellor’s popularity has waned, said on Tuesday that Germany is no longer safe.

Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann told German radio there was a higher risk of Islamist attacks because of the influx of migrants in the past two years, many of whom have fled conflicts in countries such as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The task of tracking the suspects and the movements of the truck may be complicated by the relative scarcity of security cameras in public places in Germany, compared with similar countries such as Britain.

The German cabinet on Wednesday approved a draft law to broaden video surveillance in public and commercial areas, a move agreed by political parties last month after a spate of violent attacks and sexual assaults on women.

State surveillance is a sensitive issue in Germany because of extensive snooping by the Stasi secret police in Communist East Germany and by the Gestapo in the Nazi era.

(Additional reporting by Madeline Chambers in Berlin and Mohamed Argouby in Tunis; Writing by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Truck plows into crowd at Berlin Christmas market, nine dead

Police and emergency workers stand next to a crashed truck at the site of an accident at a Christmas market on Breitscheidplatz square near the fashionable Kurfuerstendamm avenue in the west of Berlin, Germany, December 19, 2016.

By Michael Nienaber

BERLIN (Reuters) – A truck plowed into a crowded Christmas market in the German capital Berlin on Monday evening, killing nine people and injuring up to 50 others, police said.

German media, citing police at the scene, said first indications pointed to an attack on the market, situated at the foot of the ruined Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church, which was kept as a bombed-out ruin after World War Two.

The incident evoked memories of an attack in France in July when Tunisian-born man drove a 19-tonne truck along the beach front, mowing down people who had gathered to watch the fireworks on Bastille Day, killing 86 people. The attack was claimed by Islamic State.

The truck careered into the Berlin market at what would have been one of the most crowded times for the Christmas market, when adults and children would be gathering in the traditional cluster of wooden huts that sell food and Christmas goods.

Berlin police said nine people were killed

“I heard a big noise and then I moved on the Christmas market and saw much chaos…many injured people,” Jan Hollitzer, deputy editor in chief of Berliner Morgenpost, told CNN.

“It was really traumatic.”

Police cars and ambulances converged quickly on the scene as a huge security operation unfolded. The fate of the driver of the truck was not immediately clear, but Bild newspaper said he was on the run.

Emma Rushton, a tourist visiting Berlin, told CNN the truck seemed to be traveling at about 40 mph (65 Kmh).

Asked how many were injured, she said that as she walked back to her hotel, she saw at least 10.

Julian Reichelt, editor in chief of Bild Berlin, said that there was currently a massive security operation under way.

“The scene certainly looks like a reminder of what we have seen in Nice,” Reichelt said,

(Reporting by Michael Nienaber; Writing by Robin Pomeroy and Ralph Boulton)

Eyeing re-election, Germany’s Merkel takes tougher tone on migrants

German Chancellor and leader of the conservative Christian Democratic Union party CDU Angela Merkel delivers her closing speech of the CDU party convention in Essen, Germany,

By Paul Carrel

ESSEN, Germany (Reuters) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives toughened their tone on integrating migrants on Wednesday, passing a resolution on tackling forced marriage and honor killings, and cracking down on dual citizenship.

A day after Merkel called for a ban on full-face Muslim veils “wherever legally possible”, her Christian Democrats (CDU) endorsed that message and stressed the values they want the 890,000 migrants who arrived in Germany last year to adopt.

Merkel, who implored the party on Tuesday to help her win a fourth term in office at federal elections next year, told N-TV at the end of a two-day CDU party conference that individual criminals among the migrants must be found and prosecuted.

But she was quick to say: “We must not draw conclusions about the whole group of people seeking protection.”

Neighboring Austria on Sunday rejected a candidate vying to become the first freely elected far-right head of state in Europe since World War Two, halting – at least temporarily – the wave of populism sweeping Western democracies.

In a sign of how much Germany’s “Willkommenskultur”, or welcoming culture, has faded since the 2015 influx, Jens Spahn, a deputy finance minister and senior CDU member, said legal barriers for deportation must be lowered.

“Those who are not refugees, who are not fleeing from Iraq or Syria from war and persecution, must return to their homelands – and that needs to be done consistently,” he told Deutschlandfunk radio.

SWING TO THE RIGHT

Ahead of next year’s election, the CDU is trying to mend fences with its Bavarian ally, the Christian Social Union (CSU), which is tougher on immigration, to try to claw back support lost to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).

But Merkel is reluctant to move too far from the center.

In a sign the CDU base is moving to her right, party members adopted a motion to oblige young people who grow up in Germany to foreign parents to decide by the age of 23 whether they will take German nationality or that of their parents’ home country.

The CDU leadership had urged members to reject the motion, which went back on a compromise reached in 2014 with the Social Democrats (SPD), junior party in Merkel’s ruling coalition, allowing those concerned to take two passports at 23 years old.

“Such a step backward into the past will not take place with the SPD,” Katarina Barley, secretary general of the center-left Social Democrats, told the Funke media group. “The CDU has swung to the right at its party congress,” she said.

Reacting to the vote, Merkel showed she is not in lock step with her party base by insisting the 2014 double-passport agreement with the SPD would not be abandoned before next year’s election and that campaigning should not focus on the issue.

She was re-elected chairwoman of the CDU by 89.5 percent of the delegates present at the conference in the western city of Essen, where she was first elected party chairwoman in 2000.

Her score was down from 96.7 percent two years ago but above her lowest winning score of 88.4 percent in 2004, and daily newspaper Bild dubbed the winning margin “Merkel’s little victory”.

An Emnid poll on Sunday showed support for the CDU and CSU at a 10-month high of 37 percent, 15 points ahead of the SPD.

Seeking to claw back ground lost to the AfD, CDU members at the conference adopted a measure calling for forced marriage and honor killings to be “prevented and prosecuted rigorously”.

German police this week detained an Iraqi migrant for suspected rape only days after an Afghan refugee was held in a separate rape and murder case.

Germany has registered some 1,475 child marriages, according to interior ministry figures collected since last year’s influx of migrants. The Justice Ministry said its latest statistics showed there was a conviction for forced marriage in 2014, but that did not necessarily reflect the scale of such crimes.

(Additional reporting by Madeline Chambers; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Germany sees increase in Russian propaganda, cyber attacks

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s domestic intelligence agency on Thursday said it had seen a striking increase in Russian propaganda and disinformation campaigns aimed at destabilizing German society, and targeted cyber attacks against political parties.

“We see aggressive and increased cyber spying and cyber operations that could potentially endanger German government officials, members of parliament and employees of democratic parties,” Hans-Georg Maassen, head of the domestic BfV intelligence agency, said in statement.

Maassen, who raised similar concerns about Russian efforts to interfere in German elections in an interview with Reuters last month, cited what he called increasing evidence about such efforts and said further cyber attacks were expected.

The agency said it had seen a wide variety of Russian propaganda tools and “enormous use of financial resources” to carry out “disinformation” campaigns aimed at the Russian-speaking community in Germany, political movements, parties and other decision makers.

The goal of the effort was to spread uncertainty in society,”to weaken or destabilize the Federal Republic of Germany,” and to strengthen extremist groups and parties, complicate the work of the federal government and influence political dialogue.

The agency said it had seen a “striking increase” in spea-phishing attacks attributed to a Russian hacking group APT 28, also known as “Fancy Bear” or Strontrium, the same group blamed for the hack of the U.S. Democratic National Committee this year and a cyber attack on the German parliament in 2015.

The attacks were directed against German parties and members of parliament, the agency said, adding they were carried out by government bodies posing as “hacktivists”.

“Propaganda and disinformation, cyber attacks, cyber espionage and cyber sabotage are part of the hybrid threat facing western democracies,” Maassen said.

German officials have accused Moscow of trying to manipulate German media to fan popular angst over issues like the migrant crisis, weaken voter trust and breed dissent within the European Union so that it drops sanctions against Moscow.

But intelligence officials have stepped up their warnings in recent weeks, alarmed about the number of attacks.

Last month, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she could not rule out Russia interfering in Germany’s 2017 election through Internet attacks and misinformation campaigns.

Russian officials have denied all accusations of manipulation and interference intended to weaken the European Union or to affect the U.S. presidential election.

U.S. intelligence officials had warned in the run-up to the Nov. 8 presidential election of efforts to undermine the credibility of the vote that they believed were backed by the Russian government.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Sabine Siebold; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Worldwide cyber-crime network hit in coordinated raids

BERLIN (Reuters) – One of the world’s biggest networks of hijacked computers, which is suspected of being used to attack online banking customers, has been taken down following police swoops in 10 countries, German police said on Thursday.

In an internationally coordinated campaign, authorities carried out the raids on Wednesday, seized servers and website domains and arrested suspected leaders of a criminal organization, said police and prosecutors in northern Germany.

Officials said they had seized 39 servers and several hundred thousand domains, depriving criminals of control of more than 50,000 computers in Germany alone. These hijacked computers were used to form a “botnet” to knock out other websites.

Two people who are believed to have been the administrators of the botnet infrastructure known as “AVALANCHE” were arrested in Ukraine, investigators said. Another person was arrested in Berlin, officials added.

The strike came in the same week that hackers tried to create the world’s biggest botnet, or an army of zombie computers, by infecting the routers of 900,000 Deutsche Telekom with malicious software.

The attack failed but froze the routers, causing outages in homes, businesses and government offices across Germany on Sunday and Monday, Deutsche Telekom executives said.

Police said criminals had used the “AVALANCHE” botnet targeted in Wednesday’s international raids since 2009 to send phishing and spam emails. More than a million emails were sent per week with malicious attachments or links.

When users opened the attachment or clicked on the link, their infected computers became part of the botnet.

Investigators said the suspects had operated the commandeered network and made it available to other criminal groups, who had used it to send spam and phishing mails, defraud online banking user and to spread ransomware, a form of online extortion scheme.

Officials estimated worldwide damages at upward of several hundred million euros.

Authorities have identified 16 suspected leaders of the organization from 10 different countries.

A court in Verden, northern Germany, has issued arrest warrants for seven people on suspicion of forming a criminal organization, commercial computer fraud and other criminal offences.

The raids came after more than four years of intensive investigation by specialists in 41 countries.

(Reporting by Caroline Copley; Editing by Alison Williams)

Expect more bird flu cases in Europe and in the U.S

A car drives past the town sign in the northern German village of Grumby, Germany, with the "Bird Flu - off limits area" warning notice

By Sybille de La Hamaide

PARIS (Reuters) – More outbreaks of a severe strain of bird flu in Europe are likely to occur in the next few weeks as wild birds believed to transmit the virus migrate southward, the deputy head of the world animal health body said on Tuesday.

North America, especially the United States where bird flu last year led to the death of about 50 million poultry, should also prepare for new cases, said Matthew Stone, Deputy Director General of the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).

Eight European countries and Israel have found cases of the highly contagious H5N8 strain of bird flu in the past few weeks and some ordered that poultry flocks be kept indoors to avoid the disease spreading.

Most outbreaks involved wild birds but Germany, Hungary and Austria also reported cases in domestic duck and turkey farms where all poultry had to be culled.

“From the level of exposure that we have seen to date I would expected more detections, hopefully only in wild birds but it is certainly possible that the presence of this virus in wild birds will create an opportunity for exposure in domestic poultry,” Stone told Reuters in an interview.

“The OIE is very concerned for the impact on our member countries and particularly those where there has been exposure of domestic poultry and where significant control operations are underway,” he added.

Wild birds can carry the virus without showing symptoms of it and transmit it to poultry through their feathers or feces.

The H5N8 virus has never been detected in humans but led to the culling of millions of farm birds in Asia and Europe in 2014.

REDUCING RISKS

In the United States the bird flu crisis last year sent egg prices to all-time highs because of the losses and dozens of countries imposed total or partial bans on U.S. poultry and egg imports.

It would be “no surprise at all” to see new detections in wild birds in North America, Stone said, adding that he hoped the biosecurity framework set up by the U.S. industry and the government would reduce the risk of large-scale outbreaks.

“At this stage we have to take history as our best indicator of what may well play out over the next few months,” Stone said.

Bird flu cannot be transmitted through food. The main risk is of a virus mutating into a form that is transmitted to and between humans, potentially creating a pandemic.

As well as Germany, Hungary, Austria and Israel, Switzerland, Poland, the Netherlands, Denmark and Croatia have also reported outbreaks of the highly pathogenic H5N8 avian influenza, more commonly called bird flu, in recent weeks.

Denmark and the Netherlands have ordered farmers to keep poultry indoors and Germany is considering to do so to protect them from wild birds.

Switzerland said it plans to extend to the entire country precautionary measures to prevent the spread of the virus.

France, which saw its foie gras industry devastated by other strains of the virus earlier this year, has been spared by H5N8 so far but called poultry farmers to increase controls and biosecurity measures.

Since an outbreak of the H5N1 crisis in 2003 when the virus passed on to humans, killing hundreds of them in Asia and Egypt, the OIE’s 180 member countries are bound to report all new occurrences of the disease to the Paris-based organisation.

(Reporting by Sybille de La Hamaide; Editing by Gareth Jones)

French foie gras makers worry as bird flu spreads in Europe

Employee holds a duck liver in at a poultry farm in Doazit, Southwestern France,

By Sybille de La Hamaide

PARIS (Reuters) – New outbreaks in Europe of a severe strain of bird flu pose a fresh worry for French foie gras producers, already reeling from lost sales last year when the virus emerged in southwestern France.

The run-up to Christmas coincides with peak demand for the delicacy, France’s favorite festive treat, made from duck or goose liver.

Marie-Pierre Pe from foie gras makers group CIFOG, said on Monday that prices could be 10 percent higher this Christmas after the French government’s decision last year to cull all ducks and geese, and halt output for four months, in a bid to contain the virus.

Farmers hope that stricter measures in place at French farms to spare birds from contamination after last year’s crisis will better protect their industry should the current outbreak of the H5N8 strain, already seen in neighboring Germany and Switzerland and other European countries, hit France.

“When I heard about new bird flu cases in Europe, I thought: It can’t be true, the nightmare is not going to start all over again,” Pe told Reuters.

“We did all that is needed to prepare farmers since the start of the year but we are never immune from birds contaminating a farm,” she said.

Producers estimate the freezing of output had cost the industry around 500 million euros ($539 million), including a 270 million euros loss in sales and additional costs for new biosecurity material.

The 25 percent drop in output and higher costs will lead to the rise in prices of foie gras products this year, Pe said.

Sold whole or as a pate, foie gras is considered a gourmet food in Western and Asian cuisine, but the practice of force-feeding has often been criticized as cruel by animal activists.

CIFOG held regular meetings with farmers this year to explain biosecurity measures put in place after the crisis, such as better protecting food and water from wild birds, Pe said. Farmers in southwestern France, the top foie gras producing region, also face stricter rules to avoid contamination between farms, notably through equipment disinfection.

As well as Germany and Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Poland, the Netherlands, Denmark and Croatia, have also reported outbreaks of the highly contagious H5N8 bird flu in recent weeks.

No case of bird flu has been found in France so far this time but the country raised surveillance measures on Thursday to keep wild migrating birds from transmitting the virus to farm poultry.

Denmark ordered farmers to keep their poultry indoors on Monday due to the bird flu threat and Germany said it was considering ordering farmers to keep their flocks inside.

(Reporting by Sybille de La Hamaide; Editing by Susan Fenton)

Taliban storm German consulate in Afghan city, four killed

Afghan security forces investigate at the site of explosion near the German consulate office in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan

By Abdul Matin and Sabine Siebold

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan/BERLIN (Reuters) – Taliban militants stormed the German consulate in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif, ramming its outer wall with a truck bomb before battling security forces in a late-night attack that killed at least four people, officials said.

The explosion, triggered by a suicide bomber, caused extensive damage to the building and shattered windows as far as 5 km (3 miles) away, a NATO spokesman said. A local doctor said the blast and subsequent firefight also wounded 120 people.

No consular staff were among the victims, but Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Germany would review its lead role in the international mission in northern Afghanistan, where violence has escalated sharply during 2016.

Thursday’s attack also underlines one of the tougher foreign policy challenges facing U.S. President-elect Donald Trump when he takes office in January. U.S. combat operations against the Taliban largely ended in 2014, but thousands of its soldiers remain in Afghanistan as part of the NATO-led Resolute Support mission.

The Taliban said the attack was in retaliation for NATO air strikes against a village near the northern city of Kunduz last week in which more than 30 people, many of them children, were killed.

Heavily armed fighters, including suicide bombers, had been sent “with a mission to destroy the German consulate general and kill whoever they found there”, the Islamist militant movement’s spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said by telephone.

Taliban forces came close to over-running Kunduz last month, a year after briefly capturing it in their biggest success in Afghanistan’s 15-year-long war.

HUGE BLAST

The NATO spokesman said at least one vehicle packed with explosives was rammed into the high outer wall surrounding the consulate, but authorities were investigating if a second car had been involved.

“The extent of damage to the city is huge,” said Abdul Razaq Qaderi, deputy police chief of Balkh province. “This kind of an attack, bringing a truck full of explosives and blowing it up in the city, had never happened before.

“The city is still recovering from the shock.”

Noor Mohammad Faiz, the head doctor in Mazar-i-Sharif hospital, said four bodies and 120 wounded, most hurt by flying glass, had been brought to the hospital.

Qaderi said German troops had shot two men on motorcycles who did not comply with orders to stop. German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said that incident was being investigated.

Foreign Minister Steinmeier said six people were killed. All German consular employees were safe and uninjured, he added.

After coordinating the response on Thursday, the government’s crisis task force was meeting again Friday and would review Germany’s role in the Afghan mission.

“It was only possible to defeat the attackers and beat them back after fighting that occurred at the compound and in the building,” Steinmeier said.

Germany, which heads Resolute Support in northern Afghanistan, has about 850 soldiers at a base on the outskirts of Mazar-i-Sharif, with another 1,000 troops coming from 20 partner countries.

INTO THE EARLY HOURS

The explosion occurred about an hour before midnight local time, a spokesman for the German military joint forces command in Potsdam said.

Witnesses reported sporadic gunfire from around the consulate and said the blast had shattered windows in a wide area around the compound.

“It was a prepared attack for which we made all arrangements,” the Taliban’s Mujahid said. “First a suicide bomber driving an explosives-laden vehicle rammed the main building of the consulate and that enabled other fighters to move in and kill all the foreigners there.”

He said dozens of German soldiers and intelligence personnel were killed in the attack. The Taliban often exaggerate casualties caused by its operations.

After Afghan special forces, German security personnel and NATO’s quick reaction protection force intervened, fighting was over by the early hours of the morning, said Sayed Kamal Sadat, police chief of Balkh.

At least one suspect was arrested from the area of explosion, officials said.

The heavily protected consulate is in a large building close to the Blue Mosque in the center of Mazar-i-Sharif, where the Indian consulate was also attacked by militant gunmen earlier this year.

(Additional reporting by Andrea Shalal in BERLIN, James Mackenzie, Mirwais Harooni and Hamid Shalizi in KABUL, and Jibran Ahmad in PESHAWAR; Writing by Andrea Shalal; Editing by John Stonestreet)

Turkey’s Erdogan says Germany has become ‘haven for terrorists’

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan makes a speech during his meeting with mukhtars at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey, October 19, 2016. Murat Cetinmuhurdar/Presidential Palace/

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday Germany had become a haven for terrorists and would be “judged by history”, accusing it of failing to root out supporters of a U.S.-based cleric Ankara blames for July’s failed military coup.

Erdogan said Germany had long harbored militants from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency for Kurdish autonomy, and far-leftists from the DHKP-C, which has carried out armed attacks in Turkey.

“We are concerned that Germany, which has protected the PKK and DHKP-C for years, has become the backyard of the Gulenist terror organization,” Erdogan said, referring to the network of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen.

“We don’t have any expectations from Germany but you will be judged in history for abetting terrorism … Germany has become an important haven for terrorists,” he told a ceremony at his palace in the capital Ankara.

Ankara blames Gulen for the coup attempt and has suspended or dismissed more than 110,000 of his suspected followers from the civil service, security forces and other institutions in a crackdown. Gulen has denied involvement in the putsch.

German Justice Minister Heiko Maas told reporters on Tuesday that he did not want to judge whether the Gulenist movement was political in nature or not. He also said Berlin would not extradite suspects if they faced political charges.

“That would certainly not happen,” he said. For any extradition to take place, there had to be firm indications of “classic criminal activity”.

Erdogan said he was concerned by Germany’s reluctance, and warned that “the menace of terrorism would come back and strike it like a boomerang.”

(Reporting by Ece Toksabay and Tuvan Gumrukcu; Madeline Chambers in Berlin; Editing by Nick Tattersall)

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