"The clans simply have no respect for the authorities."
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§ Observers have surmised that the real reason for the judge's
leniency was that he feared his family might be subjected to retribution from
the clan.
§ "In their concept of masculinity, only power and force
matter; if someone is humane and civil, this is considered a weakness. In clan
structures, in tribal culture everywhere in the world, ethics are confined to
the clan itself. Everything outside the clan is enemy territory." — Ralph
Ghadban, Lebanese-German political scientist and leading expert on Middle
Eastern clans in Germany.
§ "The state promotes organized crime with taxpayer
money." — Tom Schreiber, a member of the Berlin House of Deputies.
A court in Hanover has handed suspended
sentences to six members of a Kurdish clan who seriously wounded two dozen
police officers during a violent rampage in Hameln. The court's ruling was
greeted with anger and derision by police who said it is yet another example of
the laxity of Germany's politically correct judicial system.
The case goes back to
January 2014, when a 26-year-old clan member, arrested for robbery, tried to
escape from the magistrate's office by jumping out of a seventh-floor courtroom
window. The suspect was taken to the hospital, where he died. Members of his
clan subsequently ransacked the hospital, as well as the court, and attacked
police with rocks and other projectiles; 24 police officers and six paramedics
were injured.
The judge said he was lenient because the
defendants witnessed the death of the 26-year-old and were traumatized. The
judge also revealed that he had reached a deal with the clan, which among other
effects prevented police from testifying in court.
Dietmar Schilff, chairman of the GdP
police union in Lower Saxony, said that the ruling had left many police
officers shaking their heads in disbelief: "All police forces expect
protection and support from the state." He added:
"If we want to protect those who
ensure public security, it must be clear that anyone who attacks police
officers attacks the state — and has to fear appropriate consequences. It does
not matter from which milieu the perpetrators come."
Observers have surmised that the real
reason for the judge's leniency was that he feared his family might be
subjected to retribution from the clan.
Middle Eastern crime syndicates have
established themselves across Germany, where they engage in racketeering,
extortion, money laundering, pimping and trafficking in humans, weapons and
drugs.
The syndicates, which are run by large
clans with origins in Lebanon, Turkey, Syria, among other places, operate with
virtual impunity because German judges and prosecutors are unable or unwilling
to stop them.
The clans — some of which migrated to
Germany during Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war and have grown to thousands of
members — now control large swathes of German cities and towns — areas that are
effectively lawless and which German police increasingly fear to approach.
Ralph Ghadban, a Lebanese-German
political scientist and a leading expert on Middle Eastern clans in Germany, said that the Hanover
ruling was a massive failure of the German judicial system. He added that the
only way for Germany to achieve control over the clans is to destroy them:
"In their concept of masculinity,
only power and force matter; if someone is humane and civil, this is considered
a weakness. In clan structures, in tribal culture everywhere in the world,
ethics are confined to the clan itself. Everything outside the clan is enemy
territory."
In an interview with Focus,
Ghadban elaborated:
"I have been following this trend
for years. The clans now feel so strong that they are attacking the authority
of the state and the police. They have nothing but contempt for the
judiciary.... The main problem in dealing with clans: state institutions give
no resistance. This makes the families more and more aggressive — they simply
have no respect for the authorities....
"The state must destroy the clan
structures. Strong and well-trained police officers must be respected on the
street. It is a poor example if clan members are allowed seriously to injure 24
policemen and six others without having to fear real consequences. In addition,
lawyers and judges must be trained. The courts are issuing feeble judgments
based on a false understanding of multiculturalism and the fear of the stigma
of being branded as racist....
"The clans adhere to a religious
group, a kind of sect with an Islamic orientation. The Islamic understanding of
their spiritual leader, Sheikh al-Habashi, who died a few years ago, justifies
violence against unbelievers. He taught that there is only the house of war [Dar
al-Harb], which justifies plundering unbelievers and possessing their
wives...."
In Berlin, a dozen or more
Lebanese clans dominate organized crime in the German capital, according to Die Welt.
They effectively control the districts of Charlottenburg, Kreuzberg, Moabit,
Neukölln and Wedding. The clans are committed to counterfeiting, dealing in
drugs, robbing banks and burglarizing department stores. Experts estimate that around
9,000 people in Berlin are members of clans.
The clans reject the authority of the
German state. Instead, they run a "parallel justice system" in which
disputes are resolved among themselves with mediators from other crime
families. A classified police report leaked to Bild described how the clans
use cash payments and threats of violence to influence witnesses whenever
German police or prosecutors get involved.
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The clans are now canvassing refugee
shelters in search of young and physically strong men to join their ranks.
State Prosecutor Sjors Kamstra explained:
"The refugees come here with no
money. They are shown how inexpensive money can be obtained very quickly.
Poverty makes this seductive. Many of them cannot speak German and are
naturally vulnerable when they are addressed by someone in their native
language. For the clans, the refugees are welcome newcomers, because they are
new here and are not known to the police."
The clans have also entered the refugee
business by buying real estate and renting those properties to asylum seekers
at exorbitant prices. Focus magazine reported that they are
laundering dirty money while at the same time getting paid by the German state
to house migrants.
Focus
reporters visited a dilapidated
apartment in Berlin in which five Syrian refugees were accommodated in 20
square meters (215 square feet). On the regular rental market the apartment
would barely have yielded €300 ($335) a month in rent, but the clan collects
around €3,700 ($4,125) per month from the German state, which pays landlords to
house migrants. "Business with the refugees is now more profitable than
drug trafficking," said Heinz Buschkowsky,
a former mayor of Neukölln.
The Berlin Criminal Police Office (Landeskriminalamt)
confirmed that
"proceeds from criminal offenses, including organized crime, were invested
in real estate by the persons concerned or by third parties." Tom
Schreiber, a member of the Berlin House of Deputies, said the clans have
exposed the moral bankruptcy of the German government: "The state promotes
organized crime with taxpayer money."
"Berlin is lost," said Michael Kuhr, a
well-known Berlin-based security consultant. "These clan structures have
established themselves in all areas of organized crime. We will never go back
to how things were 20 years ago. In addition, these people are highly dangerous
and have lost all respect for the power of the state."
In Duisburg, a leaked police
report revealed that in the
Marxloh district, the streets are effectively controlled by Lebanese clans that
reject the authority of German police. They have taken over entire streets to
carry out illegal business activity. New migrants from Bulgaria and Romania are
contributing to the problems. Marxloh's streets serve as invisible boundaries
between ethnic groups, according to Die Welt.
Residents speak of "the Kurdish road" or "the Romanian
road."
Police say they are alarmed by the
aggressiveness and brutality of the clans, which are said to view crime as
leisure activity. If police dare to intervene, hundreds of clan members are
mobilized to confront the police. A local woman interviewed by Deutschlandfunk
radio said she was afraid for
her safety: "After dark I would not stand here because there are a lot of
conflicts between foreigners, especially between Lebanese and Turks."
A 17-page report prepared for the state
parliament in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) revealed that Lebanese
clans in Duisburg divide up neighborhoods in order to pursue criminal
activities. These clans do not recognize the authority of the police. Their
members are males between the ages of 15 and 25 and "nearly 100%" of
them are known to police.
The report also described the situation
in Duisburg's Laar district, where two large Lebanese families call the shots:
"The streets are actually regarded as a separate territory. Outsiders are
physically assaulted, robbed and harassed. Experience shows that the Lebanese
clans can mobilize several hundred people in a very short period of time by
means of a telephone call."
Peter Biesenbach of the Christian
Democrats (CDU) said: "If this is
not a no-go area, then I do not know what is." He has called for an
official inquiry to determine the true scope of the criminal clans in NRW.
NRW Interior Minister Ralf Jäger rejected that request
because such a study would be politically incorrect:
"Further data collection is not
legally permissible. Both internally and externally, any classification that
could be used to depreciate human beings must be avoided. In this respect, the
use of the term 'family clan' (Familienclan) is forbidden from the
police point of view."
In nearby Gelsenkirchen, Kurdish
and Lebanese clans are vying for control of city streets, some of which have
become zones that are off-limits to German authorities. In one incident, police were
patrolling an area in the southern part of the city when they were suddenly
surrounded and physically assaulted by more than 60 members of a clan.
In another incident, two police
officers stopped a driver after he ran a red light. The driver stepped out of
the car and ran away. When police caught up with him, they were confronted by
more than 50 clan members. A 15-year-old attacked a policeman from behind and
strangled him to the point of unconsciousness.
Senior members of the Gelsenkirchen
police department subsequently held a secret meeting with representatives of
three Arab clans in order to "cultivate social peace between Germans and
Lebanese." A leaked police report revealed that the clans
told Police Chief Ralf Feldmann that "the police cannot win a war with the
Lebanese because we outnumber them." The clan members added: "This
applies to all of Gelsenkirchen, if we so choose."
When Feldman countered that he would
dispatch police reinforcements to disrupt their activities, the clan members
laughed in his face and said: "The government does not have enough money
to deploy the numbers of police necessary to confront the Lebanese." The
police report concluded that German authorities should not harbor any illusions
about the actual balance of power: "The police would be defeated."
Another leaked police report revealed that the clans
are the "executive body of an existing parallel legal system to
self-adjudicate matters between large Kurdish and Lebanese families in the
western Ruhr area." These clans "despise the police and German
courts" and "settle their matters on their own terms."
The Frankfurter Neue Presse reported that Kurdish,
Lebanese and Romanian clans have divided up the Gelsenkirchen districts of
Bismarck, Rotthausen and Ückendorf, including around the central station, and
have "claimed individual streets for themselves."
Arnold Plickert, the head of the police
union in North Rhine-Westphalia, warned: "Several
rival rocker groups, as well as Lebanese, Turkish, Romanian and Bulgarian
clans, are fighting for supremacy of the streets. They make their own rules;
the police have nothing more to say."
In Düsseldorf, two members of a
clan brutally assaulted a 49-year-old
woman who witnessed a car accident in the Flingern district. Her mistake,
apparently, was to corroborate the "wrong" version of what she saw.
The Rheinische Post called on the German
government to fight the clans:
"The threat remains, in particular
wherever large families, mostly immigrants, place the supposed need for the
protection of their loved ones above all else. The readiness for violence is
great, the inhibition threshold is low. The punishment of existing laws hardly
deters anyone."
In Naumburg, police confiscated
the driver's license of Ahmed A., a 21-year-old member of a Syrian clan, during
a traffic stop. Almost immediately, police were surrounded by a mob of
other clan members. The police retreated. The mob then marched to the police
station, which they proceeded to ransack.
Ahmed A., a serial offender whose asylum
application was rejected but who remains in Germany, said: "Lock me up.
I have nothing to lose. I am going to put a bullet in the head of every single
police officer. I will make your life feel like hell. Then I'll just be a cop
killer." He also warned the police
officer who seized his license: "I will destroy his life. I know exactly
where he lives." He then explained what he would do to the officer's wife
and daughter. Ahmed A. was allowed to walk free; police said there were
insufficient grounds for his arrest.
Naumburg police have defended their weak
response as being due to a lack of personnel, but regional parliamentarian
Daniel Sturm pointed to the big picture:
"We are talking about resistance to the power of the state." The
Interior Minister of Saxony-Anhalt, Holger Stahlknecht, said that it appeared as
though the Syrian clan had established a "parallel society" in
Naumburg. A local newspaper noted that the police's
failure to act "sounds like the capitulation of the state of law (Rechtsstaat)."
In Mülheim, around 80 members of
two rival clans got into a mass brawl following a
dispute between two teenagers. When police arrived, they were attacked with bottles
and stones. More than 100 police backed up by helicopters were deployed to
restore order. Five people were taken into custody but then released.
In Munich, police arrested 20 female
members of a Croatian clan believed to be responsible for up to 20% of all the
burglaries committed in Germany. Investigators believe that the clan has at
least 500 members throughout Germany.
In Bremen, police effectively surrendered to clans
from Kurdistan and the Balkans because of the need to conserve limited
personnel resources for the fight against spiraling street crime by migrant
youths.
Rainer Wendt, head of the German Police
Union (DPolG), criticized city
officials for their lack of resolve. "Bremen has capitulated to extremely
dangerous clans. The state's monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force [Gewaltmonopol
des Staates] is now becoming the law of the jungle. Security continues to
go down the drain."
Soeren Kern is
a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter.
