Berlin’s Senate has announced on Twitter that it has banned the “jihadist-Salafist association Jama’atu Berlin,” also known as Tauhid Berlin.
The tweet Thursday said police in Berlin and Brandenburg had also carried out early-morning searches of properties belonging to the group’s members.
A spokesman cited by the German press agency dpa said around 800 police — including special operations commandos — took part in the raids, which targeted the districts of Reinickendorf, Moabit, Wedding and Neukölln. No arrests were immediately reported.
A spokesman for the Senate’s Interior Department told the German news agency epd that Jama’atu Berlin was accused of glorifying the “Islamic State,“ advocating the killing of non-Muslims, and of being staunchly anti-Semitic.
The Tagesspiegel newspaper reported that the group’s followers previously attended the Fussilet Mosque, which was closed down in 2017. Anis Amri, the Tunisian national who carried out an attack on a Berlin Christmas market in 2016 killing 12 people, also frequented the mosque, according to authorities.
Berlin’s Interior Minister Geisel (SPD) said the group Jama’atu Berlin has existed since the end of 2018 and has about 20 members, including two so-called dangerous people. “The association despises people with a different faith or no faith and endorses their killing.” It advocates the war of the so-called Islamic State (IS), terrorist attacks and suicide bombings, he said.
State Secretary of the Interior Torsten Akmann (SPD) stressed that “the group expects that the “big battle” will come, that policemen’s “heads will be cut off”, and in a prayer they said: “Let their planes crash”.