Analysis: Berlin debates anti-terror moves

BERLIN, Sept. 17 (UPI) -- Germany is still heatedly debating tougher security measures roughly two weeks after authorities arrested three terror suspects who planned to carry out massive bombings against U.S. institutions and other targets.

Defense Minister Josef Jung" class="tpstyle">Franz Josef Jung, of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives, sparked the latest disagreement within Germany’s grand coalition government when he told a German news magazine that in case of an emergency, he would give the order to shoot down a plane hijacked by terrorists.

"If there were no other way, I would give the order to shoot (the plane) down to protect our people," Jung told the latest edition of German news magazine Focus, which hit the stands Monday.

The problem with that statement: Germany’s highest court has forbidden such a move. The Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe last year scrapped a law allowing the military to shoot down passenger planes hijacked for terrorist attacks, arguing it violated the basic life and human dignity principles.

Jung has said, however, that if the “democratic order is in danger, other rules apply.”

"I would like a clarification of the constitutional law, but there is still no consensus in the coalition (government) on this point,“ he said. “Therefore, in an emergency, I need to have recourse to a method that goes above the law."

The minister’s statements have sparked criticism from the opposition as well as the Social Democratic Party, or SPD, the conservatives’ coalition partner.

Dieter Wiefelspuetz, interior expert of the SPD, criticized Jung for “openly calling for a breach of the constitution,” while Green Party Chairman Reinhard Buetikofer even called on the minister to resign.

Burkhard Hirsch, a senior lawmaker of the opposition Free Democratic Party, said it was the first time in the history of post-War Germany that a minister “openly declares he would disregard the ruling of the constitutional court and order that a crime be committed, if he deems it right.”

Jung’s own party, however, has supported the minister’s statements, arguing there was a legal insecurity that needed to be clarified, especially as the terror threat in Germany according to officials is as real as never before.

Earlier this month, German authorities arrested three men -- two German converts to Islam and a Turkish Muslim raised in Germany -- accused of planning massive terror attacks on U.S. and other facilities in the country.

Over the weekend, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble stressed that the risk of a terrorist attack remained extremely high, despite successful anti-terror police missions all over Europe in the past weeks (Denmark and Austria have also arrested terror suspects).

“The terrorist threat has not diminished,” Schaeuble told Sunday’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung weekly. "I am no less worried since the arrests.“

Schaeuble warned of an attack with nuclear weapons, a threat scenario experts have painted as a realistic one, he said.

"Many experts are convinced that it is only a question of when, not if such an attack will happen," he said.

Schaeuble has in the past come under fire for advocating tougher anti-terror measures, such as "targeted killing" of terror suspects and a ban on the use of the Internet and cell phones by suspect foreigners living in Germany.

Some of Schaeuble’s previously controversial proposals, however, have been realized and have proved successful, such as the establishment of a database comprising detailed information on terror suspects.

And it is true that Germany’s anti-terror laws could use an update:

After the arrest of the three terror suspects -- at least two of whom were instructed in a Pakistani terror training camp -- officials realized that attending such a terrorist training camp was not a crime at all in Germany. The country’s interior ministers have since quickly agreed to change that. A similarly smooth agreement on Jung's proposal, however, is not in sight.