In connection with investigations against the “Islamic Center Hamburg,” three properties in Munich were searched on Thursday. The investigators in the Free State are focusing on the Islamic Association of Bavaria, which is said to have close ties to the Hamburg headquarters. Around 50 emergency services searched the association’s rooms on Landsberger Strasse and two other properties.
According to the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the Hamburg center is said to have repeatedly sent imams to Munich in recent years. In addition, the Munich association’s statutes stipulate that the assets should go to the center in Hamburg in the event of a dissolution. The Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution attributes the Munich association to Shiite Islamism. The group is monitored by the Bavarian State Office for the Protection of the Constitution and is considered a “branch office” of the Hamburg mosque.
The Islamic Association of Bavaria (IVB), which maintains a prayer room on the fourth floor of an office building in Laimer, said it was founded in 1994 “by a group of Iranian believers living in Munich.” Its purpose is stated to be, among other things, the “education of Iranian youth and the promotion of their religious and cultural thinking” and the “maintenance of religious and cultural values”. In his CV, the current director and imam refers to the teachings of an Iranian Grand Ayatollah who justified the exclusion of women from football stadiums and is said to have issued a death fatwa against a journalist.
On the Internet, the IVB operates as “izmunich”, the Islamic Center, based on its presumed Hamburg headquarters. But it has nothing to do with the mosque of the same name in Freimann. The latter is attributed by security authorities to the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood and is therefore also in the sights of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
During the major raid on Thursday, police officers searched 54 properties nationwide in seven federal states, as the Federal Ministry of the Interior announced this morning. The ministry is conducting an investigation against the Islamic Center Hamburg (IZH), which could result in a ban on the association. The IZH is seen as an extension of the Iranian regime, which congratulated the Islamist Hamas on its attack on Israel and described it as a “turning point in the continuation of armed resistance.” According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, the security authorities are also investigating the suspicion that the IZH supports activities of the pro-Iranian Lebanese Hezbollah, which is banned from operating in Germany.
“Today’s searches are aimed at further clarifying the club’s structures and activities in order to prepare for a possible ban,” said Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) in a statement opinion. “All evidence seized will be meticulously evaluated.” According to Herrmann, the investigators in Bavaria seized, among other things, a number of data carriers and other documents. “We are pulling out all the stops to deprive extremists of their breeding ground,” emphasized the Interior Minister.