The cancelled concerts of American superstar Taylor Swift in Vienna once again dramatically demonstrated the Islamist terror threat to everyone, including Germany, where the risk of such a threat is high, Westdeutsche Zeitung informed.
The risk of a terrorist threat in Germany is at a fairly high level, especially due to recent events that included the cancellation of Taylor Swift concerts in Austria, Germany’s close neighbour. The threat comes on top of past events in the field of football, where measures had to take place for the duration of the European Championships, with the authorities taking a number of measures to ensure security.
Thomas Haldenwang, president of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, told the German Press Agency in June that risks of jihadist attacks are much higher at the moment than it has been for a long time. Security authorities were increasingly processing relevant information, he added.
In Germany, the risk implies there are a number of people who are trustworthy to attempt a terrorist attack out of misguided political and religious beliefs. Despite, it does not mean that someone is aware of plans in which the means of the offence and the target are already known. However, if the security authorities see a high risk in a particular case, they gain access to it, even if individual elements of possible offence planning are still missing.
The authorities of the individual federal states have to take action depending on the context of tension in their region. The Board for the Defence of the Constitution, for example, also has several mosque congregations in which preachers incite alleged infidels. In June, the state of Lower Saxony banned the Salafi association of the German-speaking Muslim community (DMG) in Braunschweig.
In spite of efforts, the German authorities struggle to detect the outgoing threat in its early stages. It is particularly difficult to spot young Islamists who radicalise under the influence of Salafi preachers and terrorists who disseminate their content exclusively on the Internet and especially via social media. This is because finding evidence of this at an early stage is usually more difficult for security authorities and because Germany has high difficulties with telecommunications surveillance.
Hence, Germany is resorting to the co-operation of a US intelligence agency that has noticed expressions of sympathy for the Islamic State (IS) terrorist militia or the al-Qaida terrorist network. In this case, if additional information comes to light indicating a willingness to act, the suspect may face arrest or temporary detention.
In addition to detecting and suppressing offences, Berlin resorted to deporting “dangerous” individuals who are under police scrutiny for serious politically motivated offences up to and including terrorist attacks. According to the federal government, 35 so-called dangerous persons deported from Germany between 2021 and June 2024, but the issue here is that some of these people are citizens of Germany itself, others are citizens of states to which Germany does not currently deport anyone for legal or practical reasons.
Although, the Federal Criminal Police Office reveals 333 Islamists were still in the federal territory as of July 2021, but for the year 2024, 96 people are in German custody, 208 are in the federal territory. The Office for the Defence of the Constitution estimated the personal potential of Islamists at 27,200 last year, and only a fraction of that counted as violent. The intelligence service provides no information on how many IS and Al Qaeda sympathisers live in Germany.
