German call for more effective police
Print Edition
GERMANY must grant federal police more powers to counter threats like terrorism and cyber attacks, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said yesterday, two weeks after a failed asylum seeker rammed a truck into a Christmas market and killed 12 people.
In his most detailed response yet to the December 19 attack, de Maiziere said Germany lacked laws that other countries had, and police and intelligence bodies were too fragmented.
“Our state must be better prepared for difficult times than it has been,” de Maiziere said at the start of an election year in which immigration and security will be at the top of the political agenda.
“The federal government needs to be able to steer all security authorities where central government and the states work together on national security,” he wrote in an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Each of the 16 federal states has its own police force and intelligence agency, and the country’s worst attack in more than 35 years has reignited debate about how best to prevent information from falling between the cracks.
After the Christmas market attack, it emerged that Tunisian suspect Anis Amri had spent nearly a year and a half in Germany, using various names and moving between different parts of the country despite being identified as a security threat. For several days he evaded an intensive search, crossing three international borders before being shot dead in Italy.
De Maiziere said the federal police agency should lead national manhunts, and a discussion about centralizing intelligence agencies was needed. Better coordination was also required to monitor several hundred individuals believed to pose a threat, including many who have returned from Syria and Iraq.
The minister said Germans should not fear installing more cameras in public places to help prevent and solve crime.
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