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'Exit programme' for extremists
Publish Date: Tuesday,22 June, 2010, at 12:32 PM Doha Time
AFP/Berlin
Germany aims to tackle a growing threat from Islamic extremists with an exit
programme modelled on assistance for repentant neo-Nazis, authorities said
yesterday. "We plan to offer a hotline and a website for people who have fallen
under the influence of fundamentalists, Islamists or terrorists," Heinz Fromm,
head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the domestic
intelligence agency, told reporters.
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told the news conference that the service
would be available in a few weeks' time. Militants wanting to turn their backs
on extremism will be put in contact with "trained personnel who are capable of
offering help to people in German but also in Arabic or Turkish", Fromm said.
"We think it will be a useful effort, even though it is modest, to take a
preventative approach," de Maiziere said.
According to Fromm's agency in its annual report, there are 29 Islamic
extremist organisations in Germany, with 36,000 members at the end of 2009 -
1,500 more than the year before. Some 200 Germans or foreigners living in
Germany have spent time in Pakistan with the intention of receiving
paramilitary training by Islamist groups.
Authorities have concrete evidence that 65 of them underwent such training, the
agency said. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution launched
a similar programme for right-wing extremists in 2001. It said it has received
1,040 calls to the hotline since it was established, with about 300 from former
extremists seeking help. About 120 of them have received or are receiving
"intensive assistance" in reorienting their lives, the office's website said.
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