Pedophile allowed to work in kindergarten

Taken from Yahoo News, 15 Nov 07
By Reuters

BERLIN - A convicted pedophile sentenced to do community service in a German kindergarten will return to court next week to face charges of abusing two children there, a regional prosecutor's office said Thursday.

The man was allowed to work as a janitor at the Evangelical Kindergarten St Petri in Melle, near the northern city of Osnabrueck, because a court worker missed three prior pedophilia convictions on his record, said Alexander Retemeyer, spokesman for the Osnabrueck prosecutor's office.

The man, identified only as A.B., had been sentenced to 720 hours of community service earlier this year for working on the sly while collecting welfare payments.

"The colleague didn't pay attention and didn't see he had a sexual conviction, so she allowed him to serve in a kindergarten," Retemeyer said. "She didn't read the file."

The prior convictions date from 1988-1990, when the man was living in the former East Germany, Retemeyer said. Though the convictions are listed in the man's criminal record, the details are unclear because prosecutors cannot access his East German police file.

Police arrested the man in April after the head of the kindergarten reported he had fondled himself in front of two children.

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What kind of society do we live in when we cannot stop Paedophiles from operating within our schools? The Kindergarten should have done the necessary paperwork properly and lazyness in no excuse when protecting our children from societys nasty people. Where was the local MP or why didn't Angela Merkel Step in and take action?

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Torture Appeal

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Torture Appeal

Taken from New York Times, October 9, 2007
By DAVID STOUT

A German citizen who said he was kidnapped by the Central Intelligence Agency and tortured in a prison in Afghanistan lost his last chance to seek redress in court today when the Supreme Court declined to consider his case.

The justices’ refusal to take the case of Khaled el-Masri let stand a March 2 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va. That court upheld a 2006 decision by a federal district judge, who dismissed Mr. Masri’s lawsuit on the grounds that trying the case could expose state secrets.

The Supreme Court’s refusal, without comment, to take the case was not surprising, given that a three-judge panel for the Fourth Circuit was unanimous. Nevertheless, today’s announcement prompted immediate expressions of dismay, and it could exacerbate tensions between the United States and Germany.

The Fourth Circuit acknowledged the seriousness of the issues when it dismissed Mr. Masri’s suit. “We recognize the gravity of our conclusions that el-Masri must be denied a judicial forum for his complaint,” Judge Robert B. King wrote in March. “The inquiry is a difficult one, for it pits the judiciary’s search for truth against the executive’s duty to maintain the nation’s security.”

The ordeal of Mr. Masri, who is of Lebanese descent and was apparently the victim of mistaken identity, was the most extensively documented case of the C.I.A.’s controversial practice of “extraordinary rendition,” in which terrorism suspects are abducted and sent for interrogation to other countries, including some in which torture is practiced.

The episode has already caused hard feelings between the United States and Germany, whose diplomatic ties were already frayed because of differences over the war in Iraq. Mr. Masri’s lawyer in Germany, Manfred Gnjidic, said the high court’s refusal to consider the case sends a message that the United States expects other nations to act responsibly but refuses to take responsibility for its own actions.

“We are very disappointed,” Mr. Gnjidic said in an interview today with The Associated Press.

“It will shatter all trust in the American justice system.”

Mr. Masri contended in his suit that he was seized by local law enforcement officials while vacationing in Macedonia on New Year’s Eve 2003. At the time, he was 41 years old and an unemployed car salesman.

“They asked a lot of questions — if I have relations with Al Qaeda, Al Haramain, the Islamic Brotherhood,” Mr. Masri said in a 2005 interview with The New York Times. “I kept saying no, but they did not believe me.”

After 23 days, he said, he was turned over to C.I.A. operatives, who flew him to a secret C.I.A. prison in Kabul. There, Mr. Masri said, he was kept in a small, filthy cell and was shackled, drugged and beaten while being interrogated about his supposed ties to terrorist organizations.

At the end of May 2004, Mr. Masri said, he was released in a remote part of Albania without ever having been charged with a crime.

The C.I.A. has never acknowledged any role in Mr. Masri’s detention. But investigations in Europe, as well as news reports in the United States, have bolstered his version of events. German prosecutors issued arrest warrants in January for 13 suspected C.I.A. agents believed to have taken part in the operation that swept up Mr. Masri.

As a practical matter, it is extremely unlikely that President Bush would ever agree to turn the 13 agents over to German authorities. But the warrants against them could hinder their ability to travel in Europe.

When the Fourth Circuit dismissed Mr. Masri’s suit, Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, called the action “truly unbelievable” and “reminiscent of third-world countries.”

The Constitution Project, a nonpartisan organization that seeks to focus attention on constitutional issues, called the Supreme Court’s refusal to take up the case “profoundly disappointing.”

“The government’s treatment of Mr. El-Masri has been appalling, and the executive branch should not be permitted to hide its mistakes behind the so-called state secrets privilege,” said the organization’s senior counsel, Sharon Bradford Franklin. “Now that the court has declined to consider this issue, Congress should immediately take up legislation to reform the state secrets privilege and clarify that it does not authorize unchecked power to disregard individual rights.”

Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, who has introduced legislation to ban extraordinary rendition, said today that “the Bush administration reflexively responds with the ‘state secrets’ defense whenever it is caught bending or simply ignoring the law.”

The chief White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, said later that, on the contrary, the administration is “judicious” in citing state secrets to avoid lawsuits. “And the fact that the Supreme Court agreed with us is, in our opinion, a good thing,” Ms. Perino said.

For his part, Mr. Masri was arrested by the German police in May on suspicion of setting a fire that caused $675,000 in damage to a market in a Bavarian town. His lawyer said Mr. Masri had had a dispute with the store, and that his action was the result of not receiving psychological counseling that he had sought. A German judge ordered him held in a psychiatric ward.

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Angela Merkel is no Gerhard Schroder, so I doubt Germany will be doing anything that benefits the interest of its people - this will all probably be forgotten in the interest of national security (US National Security that is). Maybe Merkel should be the one ordered by the German judge to be held in a psychiatric ward! ...by the way does anyone know what happened to the Italian case against the CIA agents?

Germans Split Over A Mosque And The Role Of Islam

Taken from The New Yourk Times, 05 July 2007
By MARK LANDLER

COLOGNE, Germany — In a city with the greatest Gothic cathedral in Germany and no fewer than a dozen Romanesque churches, adding a pair of slender fluted minarets would scarcely alter the skyline. Yet plans for a new mosque are rattling this ancient city to its foundations.

Cologne’s Muslim population, largely Turkish, is pushing for approval to build what would be one of Germany’s largest mosques, in a working-class district across town from the cathedral’s mighty spires.

Predictably, an extreme-right local political party has waged a noisy, xenophobic protest campaign, drumming up support from its far-right allies in Austria and Belgium.


Cologne, known for its Gothic cathedral, has been jarred by divisions over plans for a mosque, to be one of Germany’s largest, for the city’s largely Turkish Muslim population. It has grown into a hot national debate.

But the proposal has also drawn fierce criticism from a respected German-Jewish writer, Ralph Giordano, who said the mosque would be “an expression of the creeping Islamization of our land.” And he does not want to see women shrouded in veils on German streets, he said.

Mr. Giordano’s charged remarks, first made at a recent public forum here, have catapulted this local dispute into a national debate in Germany over how a secular society, with Christian roots, should accommodate the religious yearnings of its growing Muslim minority.

Mosques have risen in recent years in Berlin, Mannheim and Duisburg, each time provoking some hand-wringing among residents. But the dispute in Cologne, a city Pope Benedict XVI once called the Rome of the north, seems deeper and more far-reaching.

When Turkey itself is debating the role of Islam in its political life, Germans are starting to ask how — or even if — the 2.7 million people of Turkish descent here can square their religious and cultural beliefs with a pluralistic society that enshrines the rights of women.


Bekir Alboga, top, an imam, with a model of the mosque, which he supports. Manfred Rouhs, center, opposes it as a sign of a parallel Muslim society and Ralph Giordano, a writer, sees it as “creeping Islamization.”

Mr. Giordano, a Holocaust survivor, has been sharply criticized, by fellow Jews, among others, and has even received death threats. But others say he is giving voice to Germans, who for reasons of their past, are reluctant to express misgivings about the rise of Islam in their midst.

“We have a common historical background that makes us overly cautious in dealing with these issues,” said the mayor of Cologne, Fritz Schramma, who supports the mosque but is not without his qualms.

“For me, it is self-evident that the Muslims need to have a prestigious place of worship,” said Mr. Schramma, who belongs to the center-right Christian Democratic Union. “But it bothers me when people have lived here for 35 years and they don’t speak a single word of German.”

Cologne’s Roman Catholic leader, Cardinal Joachim Meisner, is similarly ambivalent. Asked in a radio interview if he was afraid of the mosque, he said, “I don’t want to say I’m afraid, but I have an uneasy feeling.”

These statements rankle German-Turkish leaders, who have been working with the city since 2001 to build a mosque on the site of a converted drug factory, which now houses a far smaller mosque, a community center and the offices of the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs.

“The 120,000 Muslims of Cologne don’t have a single place they can point to with pride as the symbol of our faith,” said Bekir Alboga, leader of interreligious dialogue at the union, which is known as Ditib. “Christians have their churches, Jews have their synagogues.”

Mr. Alboga, a 44-year-old Turkish imam who immigrated here at 18 and speaks rapid-fire German, said the mosque would be a “crowning moment for religious tolerance.” Given Germany’s dark history, he added, “German politicians need to be careful about what they say.”

Mr. Alboga said he was particularly dismayed by Cardinal Meisner, because the Catholic Church, along with Germany’s Protestant churches, has long supported the mosque. Ditib, he said, is a moderate organization that acts as a “bulwark against radicalism and terrorism.” It plans to finance the project, which will cost more than $20 million, entirely through donations.

The group must obtain a building permit before it can break ground, but Mr. Alboga said he was confident the mosque would not be blocked. Ditib has agreed to various stipulations, including a ban on broadcasting the call to prayer over loudspeakers outside the building.

Public opinion about the project seems guardedly supportive, with a majority of residents saying they favor it, though more than a quarter want its size to be reduced.

Cologne, with one of the largest Muslim populations of any German city, already has nearly 30 mosques. Most are in converted factories or warehouses, often tucked away in hidden courtyards, which has contributed to a sense that Muslims in Germany can worship only furtively.

The new mosque would put Islam in plain sight — all the more so because the design calls for a domed building with glass walls. Showing off a model designed by a German architect who specializes in churches, Mr. Alboga said, “Our hearts are open, our doors are open, our mosque is open.”

In some ways, the mosque seems calculated to avoid touching nerves. It would not be built near a church or loom over its neighbors, like the new mosque in Duisburg. It would be flanked by multistory office buildings and a giant television tower, which would dwarf its minarets. At 180 feet tall, they would be only one-third the height of the cathedral’s spires.

Yet the Turkish community has run into fervent and organized opposition. The far-right party Pro Cologne, which holds 5 of the 90 seats in the city council, collected 23,000 signatures on a petition demanding the halting of the project. The city says only 15,000 of them were genuine.

On June 16, Pro Cologne mobilized 200 people at a rally to protest the mosque. Among those on hand were the leaders of Austria’s Freedom Party, which was founded by Jörg Haider, and the extremist party Vlaams Belang, or Flemish Interest, from Antwerp. Both advocate the deportation of immigrants.

Cologne’s deputy mayor, Elfi Scho-Antwerpes, a Social Democrat, appeared with Turkish leaders at a counterdemonstration across the street. Mayor Schramma, she noted, did not attend.

Manfred Rouhs, a leader of Pro Cologne, said the mosque would reinforce the development of a parallel Muslim society, and encourage the subjugation of women, which he said was embedded in Islam. “This is not a social model that has any place in the middle of Europe,” he said.

In this, he has found common ground with Mr. Giordano, an 84-year-old Jew who eluded the Nazis in World War II by hiding in a cellar. Mr. Giordano, who dismisses Pro Cologne as a “local chapter of contemporary National Socialists,” nonetheless agrees that the mosque is a threat.

“There are people who say this mosque could be a step toward integration,” Mr. Giordano said in an interview. “I say, ‘No, no, and three times no.’ Mosques are a symbol of a parallel world.”

Mr. Giordano said Germany needed to face the fact that, after three generations of Turkish immigration, efforts to integrate the Turkish minority had failed. Immigrants, he said, sought the privileges of membership in German society but refused to bear the obligations.

Germany’s “false tolerance,” he said, enabled the Sept. 11 hijackers to use Hamburg as a haven in which to hatch their terrorist plot. Cologne, too, has struggled with radical Islamic figures, most notably Metin Kaplan, a militant Turkish cleric known as the caliph of Cologne.

“I don’t want to see women on the street wearing burqas,” said Mr. Giordano, a nattily dressed man with the flowing white hair of an 18th-century German romantic. “I’m insulted by that — not by the women themselves, but by the people who turned them into human penguins.”

Such blunt language troubles other German Jews, who say a victim of religious persecution should not take a swipe at another religious minority. Henryk M. Broder, a Jewish journalist who is a friend of Mr. Giordano’s, said he should have avoided the phrase “human penguins.”

But Mr. Broder said that his underlying message was valid, and that his stature as a writer gave him the standing to say it. “A mosque is more than a church or a synagogue,” he said. “It is a political statement.”

For Mr. Alboga, though, the line between frank debate and racist demagoguery is not so clear.

“This is like thinking from the Middle Ages,” he said, “and it is sending the racists to the barricades.”

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The decison to build the mosque & it's size should lie with the local government that runs Cologne. If they don't object then it should not become a problem.

Under the European Unions Freedom of thought, conscience and religion - everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right includes freedom to change religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or in private, to manifest religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance. They also have the right to conscientious objection is recognised, in accordance with the national laws governing the exercise of this right. According to the Equality law, everyone is equal before the law Any discrimination based on any ground such as sex, race, colour, ethnic or social origin, genetic features, language, religion or belief, political or any other opinion, membership of a national minority, property, birth, disability, age or sexual orientation shall be prohibited. So what is the problem?

PA Upset By Merkel's Pro-Israel Stance

Taken from The Jerusalem Post, Apr. 4, 2007
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH

Palestinian Authority officials have accused German Chancellor Angela Merkel of "offending the Palestinians' feelings" during her visit earlier this week to Ramallah, where she met with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

The accusations, the first of their kind against a European leader, were made by top PA officials only hours after Merkel and her entourage left Ramallah on Monday.

"She did everything to provoke the Palestinians during her visit," said one official. "She showed no understanding for the plight of our people. On the other hand, she appeared to be very biased toward Israel."

The official claimed that while Merkel refused to meet with families of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, she focused during her talks with Abbas on the need to release kidnapped IDF Cpl. Gilad Schalit, who has been held in the Gaza Strip since last June. In addition, he noted, Merkel met with the families of missing IDF soldiers during her visit to Jerusalem.

At the joint press conference with Abbas, Merkel refused to answer a question about the Palestinian prisoners in Israel, the official added. "She appeared to be obsessed with the case of Gilad Schalit," he said. "But she refused to even acknowledge the fact that we have more than 10,000 prisoners in Israel."

Another PA official described Merkel's visit to Ramallah as "extremely negative and a total disappointment." He revealed that Abbas had originally requested that the meeting take place in Bethlehem, where Christians are celebrating Holy Week.

"We were hoping to show her the wall that Israel built around Bethlehem, but she refused to go there," he said. "President Abbas was hoping to draw parallels between Israel's wall and the Berlin Wall. He wanted to remind Merkel of the days when she lived in East Berlin."

Merkel, according to the official, also turned down a request to meet with church leaders and representatives of Palestinian civil societies. "Almost all the European leaders meet with Christian leaders and representatives of civil societies," he pointed out. "But Merkel refused to do so. She did not offer any explanation and that's why we are very disappointed with her and the German government. This behavior is completely unacceptable."

The Palestinians are also angry with Merkel for visiting the Hebrew University, where she received an honorary doctorate on Sunday, while refusing to tour the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem.

PA officials were hoping to escort Merkel on a tour of the Arab neighborhoods to show her how Israel was "changing the Arab and Muslim character" of the city.

"This woman is trying to be more Israeli than the Israelis," the official said. "During her talks with President Abbas, she totally ignored major issues related to the peace process and chose to focus on the case of Gilad Schalit.

"Germany will not be able to play any role in the peace process because of the chancellor's bias to Israel. Our people are obviously paying the price for the crimes that were perpetrated against the Jews during World War Two."

In an attempt to avoid a diplomatic crisis between the Palestinians and Germany, a senior official in Abbas's office said the allegations did not represent the official PA line.

"We categorically reject the derogatory remarks made against the German chancellor," said Nimer Hamad, political adviser to Abbas. "We appreciate the ongoing support of Germany to the Palestinians and its efforts to reactivate the role of the Quartet and support for the Arab peace plan that was re-endorsed in Riyadh last week."

In another development, Abbas reiterated on Monday his desire to meet with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert once every two weeks, as agreed during the last visit of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the region.

Abbas's remarks came during a meeting he held in Ramallah with US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Abbas briefed Pelosi on the "national unity" agreement with Hamas and called for lifting sanctions imposed on the Palestinians since Hamas came to power, said PA negotiator Saeb Erekat.

Many Palestinian journalists boycotted the meeting, in solidarity with BBC correspondent Alan Johnston, who was kidnapped in the Gaza Strip three weeks ago. Earlier this week, Palestinian journalists announced that they would stop covering the activities of Palestinian leaders for three days to protest the PA's failure to secure the release of Johnston.

German Neo-Nazi Fear Over Police Cadets

Taken from The Times, UK, March 23, 2007
By Roger Boyes in Berlin

Fears that the German police force contains neo-Nazi sympathisers have been sparked after disdainful cadets delivered an extraordinary rebuff to a Holocaust survivor.

Students at the Berlin police academy refused to listen to the harrowing testimony of Isaak Behar, 83, who had been invited to lecture them on his experiences as a Jew in the Third Reich. Mr Behar lost his parents and his two sisters in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

The cadets shouted that they did not want to hear about the Holocaust any more, and said that the Jewish community was emotionally blackmailing Germany, according to German press reports. Dieter Glietsch, Berlin’s police commissioner, has opened an investigation.

German police officers are given compulsory Holocaust-awareness training. Visits to sites where Nazis murdered or deported Jews are part of the curriculum. Mr Behar and other Jewish survivors frequently lecture at police and army colleges. “There have always been antiSemitic incidents in the army as well as the police,” said Mr Behar. “But senior officers take action when they hear of them.”

This episode, though, which occurred on Feb 27, is seen as part of a broader and more menacing trend. Last month it was revealed that at least three police bodyguards assigned to protect Michael Friedman, a leading Jewish activist, were neo-Nazi sympathisers.

One dressed in his free time in a black SS uniform and put photographs of himself on the internet. Another printed out a fake certificate declaring himself to be a member of the SS “M.F” Division — M.F. being the intitals of Michael Friedman, who was for many years the deputy chairman of the German Jewish community. The wording of the certificate began: “In the Name of the Föhrer . . .” mimicking a genuine SS document.

Yet another police guard stored the Nazi anthem, the Horst Wessel song, on his computer and played it out loud when colleagues were in the room. The policemen claimed that they were no more than harmless pranks.

But Mr Friedman, who has received many death threats because of his vociferous support for Jewish causes, is taking the case seriously. He has demanded a parliamentary inquiry from the state of Hesse, which is responsible for protecting him. According to the mass circulation newspaper Bild, one of the investigated bodguards threatened “to spill the beans about far-right activity at Frankfurt police headquarters” if charges were pressed against him.

The bodyguards have been suspended from duty. The German press and Police Workers’ Association have called for their dismissal from the force.

“These incidents show that far-right thinking is now anchored in the mainstream of German society,” said Mr Friedman, “and it is increasingly obvious in the police force”.

That sentiment was echoed by Andreas Nachama, a leading rabbi. “This antisemitism is appearing everywhere and it is as threatening as it is reprehensible.”

Insiders say that police antisemitism is usually more discreet, confined to comments at the police station after a stint of duty.

The guarding of Jewish sites, from synagogues to the Jewish Museum in Berlin, is particularly unpopular among the police rank-and-file. Their task is to head off neo-Nazi attacks or report antisemitic symbols daubed on buildings overnight.

Hate crimes
# Displaying Nazi symbols and the production of pro-Nazi materials is illegal in Germany
# Overt support for neo-Nazi groups rose after reunification of East and West Germany, with attacks on immigrant communities
# Four men linked to neo-Nazi groups firebombed a house of Turkish immigrants in Solingen in 1993, killing five
# Marius Schoeberl, 16, was murdered in 2002 by three youths in East Germany because he looked Jewish
# Support is growing for the German far-right National Democratic Party

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The consensus is that young Germans are fed up with having the Holocaust shoved down their throats and can you blame them? Whilst we should never forget the evils of the Holocaust - the new generation of Germans need to be given a fresh chance without the constant reminders of what their grandfathers did nor should they take responsibly for their actions. What would help is if Germany paid back what it stole from the Jews that lived in Germany and compensated the Jewish families. To this date there are many Jews still waiting to be compensated but are being ignored by the German government. The German chancellor is a joke, possibly one of the worst female leaders in the world. Incidentally, she is to receive an honorary doctorate of philosophy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem next month. Apparently she is to be honored by the university in recognition of her lifelong dedication to the principles of democracy and in appreciation of her warm and constant friendship for the people and State of Israel. It is more likely she is getting her degree for supplying Israel with two free nuclear submarines as well as various reduced rate arsenal. If she was going to be an advocate for democracy then she would’ve done justice to the plight of the Palestinians living in the occupied territories as well as those living in Israel and the refugees who want to return currently living outside Israel.