German Muslims on death list of neo-Nazi terror group

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - Representatives from Germany's Muslim community were targeted to be killed by a neo-Nazi group suspected of having been involved in the execution-style killing of at least nine migrants and a policewoman, the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung said Wednesday.

The list of 88 names which goes back to 2005, includes German-based Turkish and Muslim representatives as well as German lawmakers, the Munich-based paper added.

The Chairman of the Central Council of Muslims Aiman Mazyek had earlier in the day slammed the German government for having turned a blind eye on neo-Nazi terror over the years, among them the neo-Nazi murder of an Egyptian woman, arson attacks on Turkish homes and mosques and physical assaults against Muslims women wearing the hijab.

Mazyek said that his organization had requested police protection for mosques and Islamic culture centers as well as personal bodyguards for prominent German Muslims who could also be targeted in a neo-Nazi terror attack.

He expressed fears for the safety of Muslim community centers and the families of prominent German Muslims leaders.

Mazyek has repeatedly criticized the center-right government of Chancellor Angela Merkel for its refusal to address the issue of neo-Nazi crimes during its formal talks with the country's Muslim community.

Germans have been shocked by a series of revelations linked to a trio of neo-Nazis who have reportedly been involved in a crime wave for over 10 years.

They are suspected of having murdered nine immigrants -- eight Turks and a Greek-- and a policewoman between 2000 and 2007 as well as being involved in a string of bank robberies.

The evidence points to a new kind of neo-Nazi terrorism unprecedented in Germany's post-World War II history.

Police on Sunday arrested a man who is alleged to have lent his identity papers to the trio so they could rent vans.

The roll call of violence by the gang - composed of two men who apparently committed suicide on November 4 after a botched robbery and a woman who surrendered to police - continued to mount as police studied a 15-minute video claim of responsibility for the crime series.

An interior ministry spokesman in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia said earlier a 2001 bombing that maimed a 19-year-old German-Iranian woman in her parents' grocery shop in Cologne was also claimed on the trio's DVD, which was found in the gang's last home.

Federal prosecutors, already investigating the case, widened the file to include a 2004 nail bomb attack on a street in Cologne which injured 22 Turkish expatriates.

Meanwhile, Germany's secret services are also facing increased pressure following the uncovering of the neo-Nazi death squad amid allegations that at least someone in authority knew of the cell.

Intelligence services in the eastern German state of Thuringia stand accused of using the trio as informants - and no one has convincingly rebutted the allegations.

How otherwise would it have been possible - it is being asked - that the two men and and a woman, all of whom were known to police, managed to go underground in the years after 2000?

Intelligence services in the neighboring state Hesse are also in the hot waters over one of the killings, which the neo-Nazis are suspected of having carried out in central German city of Kassel.

A secret service agent was reportedly present in the internet cafe where the murder took place.

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