Dresden boosts security after mosque attack
German police are stepping up protection of Muslim institutions in Dresden after two improvised bombs exploded in the eastern city on Monday evening, one at a mosque and one at an international conference center.
No one was hurt by the blasts although the imam of the mosque was inside the building with his wife and sons.
“Even if we so far have no claim of responsibility, we must go on the basis that the motive was xenophobic,” Horst Kretzschmar, president of Dresden police, said in a statement.
5 held in Europe on suspicion of forming IS cell
He said police believed there was a link to celebrations planned for the coming weekend in the city to mark the anniversary of German reunification on Oct 3, 1990.
Kretzschmar said three mosques, a Muslim social center and a prayer room would be given protection immediately.
Soon after the mosque explosion, Dresden’s International Congress Center was also damaged by a homemade device and the bar of a nearby hotel was evacuated.
Mehmet Demirbas, founder of the mosque that was hit, said the Muslim community had been expecting some kind of attack for a long time.
“Glass panes have been broken in the past, or graffiti on the wall. But this is the first time something like this happens. Hopefully it will be the last time and we carry on happily living in Dresden,” he said.
Dresden was the cradle of the anti-Islam grassroots movement whose weekly rallies attracted around 20,000 supporters at the height of its popularity at the start of 2015.
The influx of about 1 million migrants, mostly Muslims, to Germany last year has increased social tensions, especially in eastern Germany where there have been some high-profile attacks on refugee shelters.
Support for the Alternative for Germany party, which says Islam is not compatible with the constitution, has risen due to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door refugee policy.
AfD co-leader Frauke Petry condemned the attack on the mosque, saying: “Attacking a building in which people worship God is barbaric, whether it be a church, a mosque or a synagogue.”
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble stressed at an annual conference on Islam on Tuesday that Islam belonged to Germany, repeating a view that Merkel voiced in 2015 ahead of a anti-Islam demonstration in Dresden.
Police have arrested five people suspected of forming an Islamic State cell and promoting Islamist militancy in Spain, Belgium and Germany, the Spanish Interior Ministry said on Wednesday.
Three of them were detained in Spain — two of them in Barcelona and one in Spain’s North African enclave of Melilla — one in Brussels and another in Wuppertal, Germany, it said.
The group used social media, specifically a Facebook page “Islam en Espanol” (Islam in Spanish), to glorify the Islamic State and spread the message of the militant group that operates out of Syria and Iraq, the ministry said.
They are accused of commissioning attacks, radicalization, promoting Islamist militancy and acting as go-betweens for Islamic State recruitment in Europe, the ministry said.
Spain has arrested 34 people with suspected connections to Islamist militancy this year.