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Fear of extremist recruiting in German jails

March 2, 2015

Islamic extremists are increasingly targeting German prisons to recruit new followers. Experts have warned that a terrorist attack might occur in the country in the near future.

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At a conference in Munich Monday on extremism in German jails, experts warned that self-declared jihadis were increasingly targeting prisons to recruit new followers.

"In prisons, jihadis meet people who are susceptible to their ideology more often," Winfried Bausback, the justice minister of the state of Bavaria, said on Monday.

Inken Gallner, from the Justice Ministry in the state of Baden-Württemberg, underlined the importance of identifying extremists among the prisoners without placing all Muslim inmates under suspicion.

In Berlin on Monday, a spokesperson for the Interior Ministry said Germany "continues to be a target of jihadist terrorism."

On Saturday, police officers were deployed in the north German city of Bremen after word circulated of a potential attack plot. The terror alert was downgraded on Sunday after a search of homes and a cultural center yielded no weapons. It was the third major terror scare this year in Germany, after fears of terrorist plots led to the cancellation of a January march in Dresden by the "anti-Islamization" movement Pegida and the calling off of a carnival procession in Braunschweig in February.

According to Thomas Beck, a public prosecutor and expert on terrorism at the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe, "it is only a matter of time" until an attack occurs in Germany.

das/mkg (DPA, AFP)