‘Refugees must have to respect tolerance’ – Extremist gets life sentence

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BERLIN, April 3, (Agencies): Chancellor Angela Merkel said refugees in Germany must respect tolerance, openness and freedom of religion, while senior members of her party called for a ban on foreign funding of mosques. Merkel, who will seek a fourth term as chancellor in what is expected to be a tight election in September, has come under fire for allowing more than one million refugees to enter Germany over the past two years. Interviewed by a Syrian journalist who came to Germany in 2015 and asked about what Germany was expecting from refugees, Merkel said in her weekly podcast: “We expect the people who come to us to stick to our laws.”

Merkel said it was paramount that new arrivals respected and understood the liberal values of modern Germany such as tolerance, openness, freedom of religion and freedom of opinion. The centre-right leader urged Germans to show openness in return. “We know very few things about Syria, we know very few things about Iraq or African countries. And we must see this as an opportunity to learn more and experience more,” she said. Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party has lost support since her decision in 2015 to leave Germany’s borders open for hundreds of thousands refugees fleeing the civil war in Syria and Iraq.

Immigration and security are set to be major issues in the election, in which the far-right, antiimmigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is expected to enter parliament. In an apparent attempt to address unease among traditional CDU voters over Merkel’s migration policy, CDU deputy party leader Julia Kloeckner called for stricter rules for Islamic preachers and a ban on foreign funding of mosques, echoing comments by other senior CDU members in recent days. Most of the four million Muslims living in Germany have a Turkish background and some mosques in Germany are financed by the Turkish government.

Duties
“An ‘Islam law’ can place the rights and duties of Muslims living in Germany on a new legal basis,” Kloeckner told Bild am Sonntag. Kloeckner also called for a public register that would list all mosques in Germany and provide background information on sponsors and financiers. Such rules should also include a right to a Muslim religious counsellor in prisons, hospitals and nursing homes, she added. The CDU’s coalition partner and rival party the SPD, whose new leader Martin Schulz will stand against Merkel in September’s election, flatly rejected the idea. “In my opinion, the proposals are hardly compatible with the German constitution,” SPD deputy leader Olaf Scholz told the Funke media group, adding that a law could not only be made for a single religious community. The chairman of the Islamic Council in Germany, Burhan Kesici, said the proposals were populist and put Muslims under blanket suspicion.

Meanwhile, the German government says there’s no need for new legislation to regulate Islamic organizations in the country. Members of Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union party have called for a ban on foreign funding of Islamic organizations, and for Muslims to get statutory rights to pastoral care from an imam in prisons and hospitals. Government spokesman Steffen Seibert said Monday that such a law was “a non-issue” at the moment and noted that religious freedom is guaranteed by the German constitution. The arrival of hundreds of thousands of Muslim migrants in Germany in recent years has rekindled public debates about the country’s relationship with Islam. A recent report by public broadcaster ARD found that the Islam preached in some mosques is more conservative than in many Muslim countries. A German court handed lengthy prison sentences Monday to four Islamic extremists over plots to bomb a train station and kill a far-right politician.

Laws
The Duesseldorf regional court found 29-yearold Marco G., whose surname wasn’t published in line with privacy laws, guilty of attempted murder for placing an explosive device at the main train station in the western city of Bonn in December 2012. Although the home-made bomb was discovered and defused before it detonated, the court said the German convert to Islam deserved a life sentence due to the seriousness of the crime, the dpa news agency reported. It ruled out his release after 15 years, the usual life term in Germany. He and three others were also found guilty of forming a terrorist organization and planning to kill a member of the far-right Pro NRW party who had taken part in protests against mosques during which caricatures of the Muslim prophet Muhammad were shown. Judges sentenced Albanian citizen Enea B., 46, German-Turkish dual national Koray D., 28, and German citizen Tayfun S., 27, to between 9-ó years and 12 years in prison. Prosecutors said the men’s plan was partly fueled by an audio message disseminated by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. They were arrested in March 2013, the night before the planned killing. Their lawyers had asked the court to acquit the men, according to dpa.

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