German Justice Minister Heiko Maas and some politicians on Monday called for a Europe-wide extremist database after a G20 summit in Hamburg was marred by looting, arson and violent skirmishes between left-wing extremists and police.
The large-scale disruption during the G20 meeting on Friday and Saturday, which resulted in 411 police detentions, showed that “we do not have an adequate database in Europe in the area of extremism,” Maas told mass-circulation newspaper Bild on Monday.
Maas, a centre-left Social Democrat, said many perpetrators in the riots, which were policed by some 21,000 officers, some 500 of whom were injured, were from European countries outside Germany.
He said a database “would enable authorities to get a better overview and to refuse entry to people at the border.”
Stephan Mayer, a lawmaker for the conservative Bavarian Christian Social Union, said that a European extremist database would be “sensible and worthy of support.”
“There is a very active left-wing extremist scene in Germany, but also in other European countries,” Mayer told Rheinische Post newspaper.
Mayer said: “controls at Germany’s external borders introduced as part of the G20 should continue.”
Also, Andy Grote, Hamburg’s top security official, said that a special police commission had been set up to investigate the crimes committed during the G20 and that officers were already sorting through evidence submitted by members of the public.
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, who on the weekend defended the decision to hold the summit in Hamburg, a city of two million people, was due to give a statement about the riots later in the day.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said Saturday that her government would work with Hamburg officials to help residents whose property was damaged during the summit. (dpa/NAN)