Germany to set up new mechanism to check neo-Nazi terror

Berlin, Nov 19: Germany has decided to set up a National Terror Defence Centre to combat neo-Nazi terror after a group of right-wing extremists allegedly murdered nine immigrants and a policewoman besides carrying out a series of bomb attacks and bank robberies for more than a decade.

A high-level conference of federal and state interior ministers, intelligence service officials and security experts in Berlin yesterday decided to set up a the new centre to coordinate the efforts of the domestic intelligence service and the police to deal with right-wing extremism.

A national database of such extremists, similar to the one already in place for Islamic terror suspects, will also be put in place to monitor the activities of neo-Nazis, who posed a danger to the society.

The conference also decided to set up a working group to examine the legal requirements for banning the right extremist party NPD.

A previous attempt to ban the party was rejected by the Federal Constitutional Court in 2003 on the grounds that the state hadtoo many "informers" in the party.

The federal and state governments are determined to combat the structures of right-wing extremism in whatever form it exists, Interior Minister Hans-Peter Frierdrich told journalists after the conference.

It was convened in the wake of criticisms that members of a neo-Nazi cell in the eastern German state of Thuringia carried out a string of racially-motivated murders and bomb attacks and went undetected because of lack of communication between the federal and state intelligence services, the prosecutor's office and the local police.

PTI