In the coming months, there is a threat of “mass releases” of up to 40 Islamists from German prisons who have served all or most of their sentences. Some of them are self-confessed IS sympathisers – yet they will probably soon be at large. Especially with regard to undetected “sleepers”, a serious security problem looms.
In Hamburg alone, there are ten people who could benefit from much shorter prison sentences or even early release. Two of them were convicted of offences in connection with the terrorist organisation “Islamic State” in Syria. Also, of the 21 “dangerous persons” currently in custody in Bavaria for Islamist offences, five are scheduled for release. In total, around 100 of the 551 Islamists recorded by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) as dangerous persons are currently in German prisons.
In Baden-Wuerttemberg, five persons are to be released from prison who are ” monitored for religiously motivated extremism”. It is unclear whether this concerns religious extremism in the Islamist sector. In Hanover, the number of Islamist prisoners released this year is said to be in the “low single digits”. Among them is Safia S., who in 2016, at the age of 15, was sentenced to five years in juvenile detention for stabbing a policeman in the throat. This crime is considered the first IS assassination in Germany.
Regarding her case, a justice official explains: “Safia S. is celebrated as a martyr by Islamists outside, outside the prison. She is one of the few women in Germany who has committed an Islamist crime, she has a role model function.”
Even in the more “provincial” federal states, Islamic terrorists and ” faithful criminals” can look forward to a life in freedom in the near future. In Rhineland-Palatinate, for example, the Ministry of Justice refused to give journalists any information on how many of the eleven people imprisoned there for supporting a terrorist organisation, establishing relations to commit or instructing a serious act of violence that endangers the state and financing terror are scheduled for release this year. The only thing that is certain is that there will be such releases.
Only in Hesse are “all Islamists in pre-trial detention” suspected by the authorities to be a risk of absconding. Among them are also IS returnees who have not yet been convicted. Therefore, according to the judicial authorities there, no releases from prison are currently planned. On the other hand, the two Islamist criminals currently imprisoned in Saarland, both convicted of crimes committed in Germany (!), are to be released this year. The same applies to three prisoners in Schleswig-Holstein who also committed their crimes in Germany.
While German courts regularly find that many domestic crimes and serious crimes without ideological motives, but also right-wing extremist offenders, are particularly guilty (which rules out release after serving the sentence and either special security detention or hospitalisation is ordered), Islamist offenders continue to be treated with kid gloves by the judiciary. In the case of many of the offenders, there is a considerable risk that they may have become even more radicalised while in prison.
In addition, the state is blind to the real threat of terror posed by Islamists: of the several thousand German citizens who have left for Syria since 2013 to serve as IS henchmen or followers of jihadist fighting forces, the German government knows of just 350 returnees. It is therefore completely unknown how many other people are in the country without being detected.
It is therefore considered likely that the criminals now scheduled for release could join already existing networks or found new ones. Especially the current renewed mass immigration also of Muslim young African men as supposed “Ukraine refugees” allows a huge dark field of potential Islamists to infiltrate unnoticed into Germany and the EU. Corresponding threat prognoses by the authorities, if they exist at all, are withheld from the public.
