Germany against Islamist propaganda on the internet

On 19 October, the German general prosecutor at a court in Munich accused eight people of supporting terrorist organisations through propagating Islamist contents in German on the internet. This is the second trial of a similar case, and both reflect a new element of a strategy that German officials have been employing in order to prevent the activities of Islamist circles in Germany.

Germany’s general prosecutor presented his accusation against seven German citizens and one Turkish citizen of supporting al-Qaida and Ansar al-Islam, and of membership in the German section of a radical organisation, the Global Islamic Media Front. Between 2006 and 2008 the accused were said to have disseminated ideas of jihad and calls to join al-Qaida on German blogs and internet forums. In August this year the prosecutor’s office in Berlin presented charges against three German citizens of financing (at the turn of 2010) foreign terrorist organisations – the Islamist Union of Jihad (IJU) and the German Talib Mujahedins (DTM). Two of these three people are additionally accused of disseminating propaganda films calling for jihad and urging people to join the IJU, the DTM and al-Qaida. Their trial will begin on 5 November.

These trials are connected with increasingly frequent cases of German citizens going to training camps for terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to German officials, easy access to Islamist propaganda materials in German on the internet contributed to the increased number of such trips.

Starting trials against disseminating such contents is intended to reduce the impact of Islamist propaganda in the German language. <jus>