21^st September 2009

Germany was on edge yesterday after a fourth consecutive al-Qaeda video warned of an imminent bomb attack in Germany unless the Government withdrew its troops from Afghanistan.

The threats were aimed at German voters ahead of next Sunday’s general election and were being taken seriously by the security authorities.

Armed police are being deployed around railway stations, airports and Jewish institutions. The 660 orderlies at Munich’s Oktoberfest beer festival — the world’s biggest open air drinking party and a possible target — have been briefed to check the baggage of suspicious revellers. The Oktoberfest, which celebrates beer and alcohol consumption, would presumably not have many believing Muslims in the crowd.

“If the German people do not use their chance to select parties that will withdraw their soldiers from Afghanistan, then there will be a terrible awakening after the election,” said the German-Morrocan jihadist Bekkay Harrach in a video carried on the website as-Sahab, which is often used for al-Qaeda propaganda.

Speaking softly and in perfect German, Harrac, a 32-year old former Bonn-based student of business economics, warned Muslims that they should stay away from public spaces in the fortnight after the election and should keep their children close to them.

Harrach made an offer to German voters: “When the last German soldier returns home from Afghanistan, then the last Mujahidin will be called back from Germany.”

There is a broad popular majority against fighting in Afghanistan in Germany but only one party, The Left, has come out in blanket opposition to deployment. The chance of The Left entering a newly-minted government in the coming weeks seems very remote.

Whatever al-Qaeda’s political intentions in Germany, no one in the security services seems to doubt that it has been planning an operation there. Al-Qaeda sympathisers spoke recently on the internet about an impending German 9/11. The US Government, which has been urging caution on its citizens travelling to Germany during the election period, has picked up signals that a North African branch of al-Qaeda is targeting Germans.

“After the US, Germany is only the second country whose population is being addressed so directly and in the national language,” said a report leaked from the Federal Criminal Agency at the weekend.

Some security officials fear that al-Qaeda might go for a soft target such as the Munich Oktoberfest, which opened this weekend and which continues for a week beyond the election of September 27. Barely three hundred policemen and only 16 closed circuit television cameras are in place at an event which attracts some six million visitors.

After 9/11 the FBI warned German authorities that bombers could disguise themselves as medical personnel: scores of doctors and nurses are on duty and an operating theatre has been installed to deal mainly with alcoholic poisoning.

Joachim Herrmann, the Interior Minister of Bavaria, tried to fend off criticism that he was leaving the Oktoberfest almost unshielded and stressed that the video threat had not identified any particular target. “We cannot patrol every square metre of Germany around the clock.” But, he added, “we have to take these threats very seriously indeed”.