Germany Sets Plan to Rein In Extremists Measures would make it easier to monitor, detain and deport suspects by Ruth Bender
http://www.wsj.com/articles/germany-sets-plan-to-rein-in-extremists-1484081425
BERLIN—Germany released a plan to rein in known extremists after authorities failed to prevent a terrorist attack last month by a Tunisian radical on a government watch list.
The proposed overhauls aim to make it easier for police to monitor, detain and deport asylum seekers believed to pose a terror threat, Germany’s interior and justice ministers said on Tuesday.
The plan—which the government plans to implement with legal changes in the weeks to come—reflects efforts to tighten enforcement within the guidelines of constitutional safeguards, informed by abuses committed under the Nazis, that strongly protect personal freedom.
Under current state police laws, for instance, preventive custody doesn’t exceed 14 days. Detentions of foreigners to be expelled also face stringent legal requirements, such as the necessity to obtain proof of identity of a suspect from his or her country of origin.
Under the ministers’ proposals, police would be allowed to detain rejected asylum seekers deemed dangerous for up to 18 months, by lowering some of the current requirements.
German authorities have been seeking ways to improve antiterror enforcement since Anis Amri rammed a truck into a Berlin Christmas market last month, killing 12 people and exposing holes in the country’s security architecture.
The planned overhaul “shows that in difficult times we are capable of finding reasonable solutions that will increase the safety of citizens in Germany without disproportionately constraining the public’s freedoms,” said Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière.
German authorities came under criticism for failing to expel Amri in the months before the attack even though he was on a watch list of extremists, had voiced plans to commit atrocities and was using fake identities.
The target of Tuesday’s proposals are people like Amri who are found to be radical Islamists capable of committing an attack. German authorities are tracking 550 such extremists—known in German as Gefährder—according to security officials. Half of them are believed to be in Germany. Amri was killed by police in Italy several days after the Berlin attack.
Most of these individuals haven’t been determined to have broken laws, leaving German authorities few legal tools to keep them in check. Around 80 are in detention. The others are being watched by police and intelligence services, some more closely than others, security officials said.
The German constitution makes it very hard to detain people who aren’t suspected of committing a crime. That contrasts with the U.S., which allows the detention of terrorism suspects for indefinite periods.
“It’s pretty much impossible to take a Gefährder into custody unless one has a very concrete indication that a person is planning an immediate attack,” said Nikolaos Gazeas, a Cologne-based lawyer and expert on counterterrorism law. “That would mean a complete inversion of our legal system.” CONTINUE AT SITE
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