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FOOTBALL

Tracking tags mooted for football hooligans

Germany’s interior minister provoked fury by calling on Wednesday for notorious football hooligans to be forced to wear electronic ankle tags so police can keep track of them and stop them going to matches.

Published: 30 May 2012 11:27 CEST
Tracking tags mooted for football hooligans
Photo: DPA

His suggestion is just one of many being considered in the country, after a particularly violent and spectacular period connected with football. Other ideas include phasing out the standing-room areas still to be found in many German football stadiums, banning alcohol and introducing personalised tickets.

But it is Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich’s idea of banning known hooligans by making them wear an electronic tracking tag that has provoked the fiercest criticism. He was echoing the country’s chief public prosecutor Harald Range who called for the use of the ankle bracelets for “notorious hooligans” according to the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper.

A group of football fans who are lawyers is opposing the idea, and sent a letter on Monday to Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, saying the electronic ankle tags would be an illegal intrusion into people’s civil rights and against the German Constitution.

Friedrich is a member of the Christian Social Union (CSU) party and Range and the justice minister are Free Democratic Party (FDP) members. Both parties are part of the ruling coalition.

His comments came shortly before he was to meet interior ministers from Germany’s 16 states at a gathering of the State Conference of Interior Ministers.

Lorenz Caffier, chairman of the interior ministers’ conference, stopped short of calling for the tags in an interview with Sunday’s Die Welt newspaper, but said he wanted hooligans banned from stadiums and called for an alcohol prohibition and personalised tickets.

He also wants more video cameras in the stadiums and said the idea of all-seated stadiums should be considered.

Unruly fans have been a problem for some time now in German football, but hit the headlines earlier this month when fans stormed the pitch of a match between Fortuna Düsseldorf and Hertha Berlin – with more than a minute left to play.

Hundreds of fans poured onto the field, with many tearing off bits of turf and shooting firecrackers as the players fled to the safety of their locker room.

Michael Gabriel, the head of the Fan Project Coordination Centre, a pro-fan group established in 1993, told The Local that while many point to that relegation game, the trouble did not come from violent fans, but from overenthusiastic ones who broke up the game shortly before it was to finish.

Gabriel said his group acknowledges the problem of unruly fans but also does not support electronic ankle tags as a way to fix the problem.

The Local/DAPD/mw

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CRIME

Germany arrests Syrian man accused of plotting to kill soldiers

German authorities said Friday they had arrested a 27-year-old Syrian man who allegedly planned an Islamist attack on army soldiers using two machetes in Bavaria.

Published: 13 September 2024 11:17 CEST
Germany arrests Syrian man accused of plotting to kill soldiers

The suspect, an “alleged follower of a radical Islamic ideology”, was arrested on Thursday on charges of planning “a serious act of violence endangering the state”.

The man had acquired two heavy knives “around 40 centimetres (more than one foot) in length” in recent days, prosecutors in Munich said.

He planned to “attack Bundeswehr soldiers” in the city of Hof in northern Bavaria during their lunch break, aiming “to kill as many of them as possible”, prosecutors said.

“The accused wanted to attract attention and create a feeling of insecurity among the population,” they said.

German security services have been on high alert over the threat of Islamist attacks, in particular since the Gaza war erupted on October 7th with the Hamas attacks on Israel.

Police shot dead a man in Munich this month after he opened fire on officers in what was being treated as a suspected “terrorist attack” on the Israeli consulate in Munich.

The shootout fell on the anniversary of the kidnap and killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games by Palestinian militants.

The 18-year-old suspect had previously been investigated by authorities in his home country Austria on suspicion of links to terrorism but the case had been dropped.

The incident capped a string of attacks in Germany, which have stirred a sense of insecurity in Germany and fed a bitter debate of immigration.

Three people were killed last month in a suspected Islamist stabbing at a festival in the western city of Solingen.

READ ALSO: ‘Ban asylum seekers’ – How Germany is reacting to Solingen attack

The suspect in the attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State group, was a Syrian man who had been slated for deportation from Germany.

A federal interior ministry spokesman said if an Islamist motive was confirmed in the latest foiled attack, it would be “further evidence of the high threat posed by Islamist terrorism in Germany, which was recently demonstrated by the serious crimes in Mannheim and the attack in Solingen, but also by acts that were fortunately prevented by the timely intervention of the security authorities”.

The Solingen stabbing followed a knife attack in the city of Mannheim in May, which left a policeman dead, and which had also been linked to Islamism by officials.

Germany has responded to the attacks by taking steps to tighten immigration controls and knife laws.

READ ALSO: Debt, migration and the far-right – the big challenges facing Germany this autumn

The government has announced new checks along all of its borders and promised to speed up deportations of migrants who have no right to stay in Germany.

The number of people considered Islamist extremists in Germany fell slightly from 27,480 in 2022 to 27,200 last year, according to a report from the federal domestic intelligence agency.

But Interior Minister Nancy Faeser warned in August that “the threat posed by Islamist terrorism remains high”.

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