Germany plans security overhaul after Berlin attack
Germany's interior minister has outlined plans for a security services overhaul following the Berlin truck attack, including greater federal powers on domestic intelligence and quicker expulsions of illegal migrants
German police patrol near Berlin's Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church on December 21, 2016 (Photo: AFP)
Germany’s interior ministry is seeking to overhaul the country’s security apparatus and make it easier to deport rejected asylum seekers in the wake of last month’s terrorist attack on a Berlin Christmas market.
Outlining a number of measures in an article for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany’s interior minister Thomas de Maizière said recent terror attacks, as well as reports of cyber attacks on the Bundestag, meant “we have to face the fact that our state has to be better prepared for difficult times than it is now”.
De Maiziere is reportedly seeking greater federal powers on domestic intelligence, quicker expulsions of illegal migrants following the Berlin truck attack, and for a new national crisis management centre to be set up.
"We don't have federal jurisdiction to deal with national catastrophes. The jurisdiction for the fight against international terrorism is fragmented," he wrote in the guest column.
"The federal police's scope of action is restricted to railway stations, airports and border controls," he wrote, stressing that "it is time" to re-examine Germany's security set-up.
Policing and domestic intelligence services in Germany are currently decentralised, with responsibilities split between the federal and state governments.
"We need expertise on the ground in the regional states, but also more control exercised by a strong (federal) state," de Maiziere told public broadcaster ZDF.
Anis Amri, the Tunisian man believed to have been behind the attack at Berlin’s Breitscheidplatz on 19 December, had dropped off German security agencies’ radar even though he had been identified as a potential terrorist threat. In the aftermath of the attack some officials pointed to a mix-up of regional competences. German authorities have also been criticised for failing to deport Amri, 24, despite his asylum application being rejected. Officials in North Rhine-Westphalia said paperwork required to extradite him had only arrived from Tunisia in the days after the attack.
