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Berlin / Düsseldorf (dpa) - Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) has banned the Salafist association Ansaar International and all branches of the Islamist association.
His ministry said the ban was enforced early Wednesday morning with searches and seizures in ten federal states.
Ansaar International has its headquarters in Düsseldorf, the sub-organization WWR-Help in Neuss, North Rhine-Westphalia.
The Ansaar headquarters not far from Düsseldorf Central Station was searched on Wednesday morning.
Numerous officials stood in front of the residential building that morning, some officials had gone into the building, as a dpa photo reporter reported.
According to initial information, objects and people in Rhineland-Palatinate, Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Berlin, Brandenburg, Hamburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein and Hesse were affected.
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To justify the ban, the Interior Ministry said that Ansaar's fundraising was done with the intention of passing them on to terrorist groups abroad, in particular to the Al-Nusra Front in Syria, the Palestinian Hamas and Al-Shabaab in Somalia .
Some of the support directly benefits this association.
Aid projects are sometimes supported, "which, however, are directly part of the sphere of activity of the respective terrorist organization".
The ministry also believes that the group's proselytizing activities are against the constitutional order.
Here, "enemies of a world order that protects the human dignity of people of different faiths are continually being created".
Children from Germany would be sent to the facilities set up by Ansaar abroad, "in order to internalize Salafist-extremist content and bring it back to Germany."
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"If you want to fight terrorism, you have to dry up your sources of money," said Seehofer, as the interior ministry spokesman, Steve Alter, wrote on Twitter.
The starting point for the ban was a large-scale raid on the network in April 2019, during which extensive material was confiscated.
About half of the 90 people and objects that were affected at the time were in North Rhine-Westphalia.
The network of associations that have now been banned also includes the Änis Ben-Hatira Foundation named after the German-Tunisian football player, the Somali Committee for Information and Advice in Darmstadt and the Surrounding Area, the women's rights association ANS.Justice, "Ummashop" and Helpstore Secondhand UG as well as Better World Appeal. The Interior Ministry found that donors were defrauded by the untrue claim that the funds were used exclusively for humanitarian purposes.
In April of this year, apartments in North Rhine-Westphalia and Bavaria were searched in connection with the ban proceedings on suspicion of financing terrorism.
The suspicion is directed against three suspects between the ages of 32 and 40, the Düsseldorf Public Prosecutor said at the time.
Investigate suspected fraud and infidelity.
One of the accused is a Düsseldorf lawyer.
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© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210505-99-472514 / 3
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