Berlin is taking seriously an internet threat by presumed al-Qaeda militants warning of imminent attacks on three German cities, the interior ministry said on Saturday. “This video confirms our belief that jihadist propaganda against Germany has taken a new dimension,” the ministry said, referring to a clip posted on YouTube. “In these types of documents, Germany is explicitly threatened, in the German language,” it said.
In the video message aired last week, the militants said Germans were “gullible and naive” if they thought they could “escape unscathed when they are the third occupation force in Afghanistan”. “We are going to send an army into your cities, in particular Berlin, Cologne and Bremen,” they said, cited by the German weekly Focus magazine. “Germany and four other countries will have problems beginning in February 2009,” the militants said in the video, which was pulled from the website on January 12.
Video available on YouTube (German with Arabic subtitles): Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
