The terror threat from Islamic extremists remains high in Germany, according to the country’s Federal Ministry of the Interior. Department officials said in a press release this week that they must continue to approach this issue with the “greatest vigilance.”
This followed the publication of a report by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), which found there were more extremist crimes across the board in 2022 than ever before. The figure stood at 35,452, just shy of 2,000 more acts than the year before.
Right-wing extremists, it said, pose the greatest threat in Germany, with around 38,800 individuals labelled as such. The report found there are also 36,500 left-wing extremists in the country and 27,480 Islamist extremists.
While the latter group was the only one reported to have decreased its numbers between 2021 and 2022 (though only marginally), German officials maintained that “Islamist terrorism remains dangerous.” Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser pointed to foiled plots in two regions this year to highlight continuing dangers.
She said:
We are … continuing our tough stance against Islamists. Here there is still reason for the greatest vigilance. Our security authorities have already prevented two possible Islamist attacks in Castrop-Rauxel and in Hamburg this year.
Research for the report also found that the Salafist movement has “become more active again after the pandemic. In particular, the identification and clarification of financial activities of Islamist and extremist individuals and organisations is of particular importance.”
On the whole, officials said that extremists are becoming “more violent and younger.” And the Russian invasion of Ukraine is understood to have increased the threat of espionage, cyber attacks, and disinformation campaigns.
To make matters all the more difficult, the report said that the ideologies held by extremists are increasingly “mixing.” Explaining this trend, BfV President Thomas Haldenwang said:
We are finding that boundaries within phenomenal areas are blurring and mixed scenes form, even if the right-wing extremism continues to represent the greatest danger to our democracy, so special vigilance is also required in the case of Islamist terrorism. We also see a high level of radicalization in violent left-wing extremism. As an early warning system, we keep an eye on these developments and counteract them decisively.
