United Press International May 9, 2007

BERLIN, May 9 (UPI) — Ahead of June’s Group of Eight summit in Heiligendamm, German security officials are cracking down harder on radical left-wing groups, and Berlin has received tips that attacks are set before and during the high-profile meeting.

Wednesday morning two police vans stopped, tires screeching, in front of the Mehringhof, a large left-wing cultural center and office building in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district. About 20 agents entered the building and searched several of its offices. The Mehringhof, in the 1970s a key home of the Berlin squatter scene, today houses a bike shop, migrant aid organizations and several far-left groups that publish magazines and books.

While officers on the scene did not comment, it surfaced later Wednesday that the move was part of a massive series of coordinated police raids in which some 880 agents of Germany’s Federal Criminal Office and 20 agents of the Federal Prosecution Office searched roughly 40 properties in six German states because of evidence that terrorist groups planned attacks before and during the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, northeastern Germany.

The raids in Hamburg, Berlin, Brandenburg, Bremen, Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony came as measures in two separate investigations, Andreas Christeleit, spokesman of the German Federal Prosecution Office, told United Press International Wednesday in a telephone interview.

One investigation was launched because of the “suspicion that a terrorist group has been created to violently disrupt the G8 summit,” Christeleit said, adding that the other investigation was part of measures against the so-called Militant Group, a far-left terror organization responsible for some 25 attacks since 2001. Officials believe that both groups plan attacks before and during the G8 summit to “disturb or even prevent” the meeting, the prosecution office said in a Wednesday statement.

Some 18 known people and more unknown individuals are being investigated for creating a new terror group specifically in opposition to the G8 summit, the statement said. The new group is believed to be responsible for 12 arson attacks in 2006, all motivated by anti-globalization aims.

Targets of the attacks were the car of Hamburg’s Deputy Finance Minister Thomas Mirow as well as the buildings of several companies and economic institutes in Berlin and Hamburg.

“The goal of the group (MG) is to, with constant militant actions, replace the current state and social structures with a communist order,” the statement said. “The group’s attack targets are public institutions such as finance, social and work offices as well as police and justice buildings in the Berlin area.”

Last year the MG executed two arson attacks in Berlin in specific opposition to the G8 summit, targeting a judicial building and an economic think tank.

The raids are just one part of a coordinated effort by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s grand coalition government to guarantee security for the June 6-8 G8 summit. Also Wednesday, Germany’s Interior Ministry said it would beef up border security to weed out violent protesters.

“As part of security measures for the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, controls can be carried out on various border points … to prevent potential criminals and others intending to use violence from entering Germany,” the ministry said in a statement. “Particular attention will be paid to potentially violent anti-globalization activists.”

Apart from the leaders of the world’s leading industrialized nations, between 50,000 and 100,000 anti-globalization demonstrators are expected to attend the summit taking place in the Baltic Sea resort. Police said between 3 percent and 5 percent of those demonstrators may be violent. Unlike last year in St. Petersburg, Russia, where most left-wingers stayed away because of a government crackdown and high travel costs, Germany is easily accessible for most activists in Europe, observers say.

Merkel is nevertheless eager to prevent any sort of violence that has marred previous summits, such as 2001 in Genoa, Italy, when police and protesters violently clashed for days.

Nearly $20 million has been spent on a fence around the summit venue to keep protesters away, and the latest raid is aimed at finding out what the far-left scene may have had in store to break security during the summit.

Meanwhile, Berlin’s left-wing scene protested in online forums and statements that the raids were carried out by brutal and reckless police, and that the entire move was but a mere attempt to criminalize otherwise legitimate anti-G8 protests.

Germany won’t know whether the raids were successful for quite a while: Christeleit, of the German Federal Prosecution Office, said it will take weeks to analyze the material (computers and files) confiscated.

Published: May 9, 2007 at 1:51 PM
By STEFAN NICOLA
UPI Germany Correspondent