Berlin dissolves radical Salafist group

State Minister of the Interior of Belrin Andreas Geisel has banned an armed, Salafist association called “Jamaatu Berlin”, also known as  “Tauhid Berlin”.

The members of the association knew each other from the infamous Fussilet Mosque. Dissolved in February 2017, the Fussilet Association was the place where Anis Amri – the perpetrator of the 2016 Berlin Christmas market terrorist attack – got to meet Islamists. Amri drove a lorry into the crowd, killing 12 people.

The association Jamaatu Berlin, disbanded on Thursday, did not have its own place of worship. The group, apparently following the traditions of the Fussilet Mosque, presumably found that existing Salafist mosques were not radical enough, Der Tagesspiegel wrote.

Its members openly endorsed the assassination of Samuel Paty, a teacher brutally decapitated in October last year, praised the Islamic State’s “struggle” and encouraged the murdering of Jews. They advertised their views on leaflets, and often engaged in conversations with young people on the street by giving them free copies of the Quran.

The leaders of the group were Jarrah B., better known as Abu Umar, and his wife. The association had both a male and a female branch, bringing together Salafist women with radical men as a kind of marriage mediator. Several members of Jamaatu Berlin are also being prosecuted, including for threatening police officers, and two members of the group are listed as potential terrorists.

Some 850 police officers, with members of the special police unit among them, searched 24 flats and 19 other facilities linked to members of the group in a large-scale raid in Berlin and surrounding areas on Thursday.

Speaking about the case, Interior Minister Andreas Geisel emphasized that the group had violated the constitutional order, rejecting the rule of law and democracy, and added that Jammatu Berlin also supported armed jihad and suicide bombings.