Germany: A hotbed of Hizbullah activity

Jerusalem Post August 07 2008 Khaled Kashkush is not the first Hizbullah spy to be recruited and trained in Germany In 1997 the Lebanese Shi'ite movement recruited Stefan Smyrek, a German who converted to Islam, to carry out a suicide attack in Tel Aviv or Haifa. Smyrek, whose father was a British soldier stationed in Germany, was arrested at Ben-Gurion Airport and released as part of a prisoner swap in 2004. Alexander Ritzmann, a Hizbullah expert and senior fellow at the European Foundation for Democracy, told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday that mosques and Iranian cultural centers in such cities as Hamburg, Berlin and Münster were hotbeds of Hizbullah activity. The terrorist organization has not been outlawed in Germany, and its approximately 900 supporters are permitted to raise funds and call for the destruction of... [read full story]