Police ban German anti-Islamic rally

Police have banned a planned rally by German anti-Islamists, citing a terror threat, but the group says it had already cancelled its latest march.

Counter-demonstrations were called against the group PEGIDA, whose weekly anti-immigrant street protests have been condemned by church, business and political leaders, Jan 5, 2015 Cologne, Germany. (OLIVER BERG/AFP/Getty)

People take part in a protest against a rally by a mounting right-wing populist movement on January 5, 2015 in Cologne, western Germany. (AFP PHOTO / DPA / OLIVER BERG)

German police have banned a planned rally by the anti-Islamic PEGIDA movement and other public open-air gatherings in the eastern city of Dresden, citing a terrorist threat.

Dresden police said they received information from federal and state counterparts indicating a "concrete threat" against the right-wing populist group.

PEGIDA earlier told its followers on Facebook that its 13th planned rally had been scrapped, citing a threat from the IS jihadist group, and portraying the cancellation as its own decision.

Police said there had been calls for would-be "assassins to mingle among the protesters... and to murder an individual member of the organising team of the PEGIDA demonstrations".

This was consistent with "an Arabic-language tweet that called the PEGIDA demonstrations an enemy of Islam", it said.

Top-circulation daily Bild said the threat targeted Lutz Bachmann, the most prominent leader of PEGIDA, or "Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident".

A PEGIDA spokeswoman, Kathrin Oertel, confirmed on German television that Bachmann was the target.

Oertel had already said in an earlier statement it would have been "irresponsible to expose our sympathisers and our city to incalculable risks".

The PEGIDA marches - which have voiced anger against Islam and "criminal asylum seekers" and vented a host of other grievances - began in Dresden in October with several hundred supporters and have since steadily grown.

They drew a record 25,000 people last Monday, in the wake of the attacks by radical Islamists in Paris in which 17 people were killed.

Also last Monday, some 100,000 Germans marched in nationwide counter-demonstrations against PEGIDA.

Dresden police said that after the latest information "and given the characteristics of terrorist attacks, we must assume the use of homicidal means and an immediate threat to life and limb of all participants of the demonstrations".


Share

2 min read

Published

Updated

Source: AAP



Share this with family and friends


Get SBS News daily and direct to your Inbox

Sign up now for the latest news from Australia and around the world direct to your inbox.

By subscribing, you agree to SBS’s terms of service and privacy policy including receiving email updates from SBS.

Download our apps
SBS News
SBS Audio
SBS On Demand

Listen to our podcasts
An overview of the day's top stories from SBS News
Interviews and feature reports from SBS News
Your daily ten minute finance and business news wrap with SBS Finance Editor Ricardo Gonçalves.
A daily five minute news wrap for English learners and people with disability
Get the latest with our News podcasts on your favourite podcast apps.

Watch on SBS
SBS World News

SBS World News

Take a global view with Australia's most comprehensive world news service
Watch the latest news videos from Australia and across the world