Germany Closes Reichstag Dome to Tourists Amid Heightened Terrorism Alert
By - Nov 22, 2010 7:07 PM GMT+0530bloomberg.================================================================================
The dome, which contains a spiral walkway from which tourists have a panoramic view of the German capital, will be closed until further notice, parliament said in a statement on its website today. The 116-year-old Reichstag building houses Germany’s lower house of parliament, or Bundestag.
German authorities on Nov. 17 announced increased security at airports and railway stations after receiving “concrete indications” that Islamist extremists plan to stage an attack in Germany toward the end of this month. Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere warned of a “new threat level” after receiving intelligence from an unidentified foreign ally and gathering evidence domestically from Islamist groups.
Part of the intelligence came from a source tied to an extremist group who wanted to return to Germany, Der Spiegel magazine reported yesterday, without saying where it obtained the information. The witness cited plans by Pakistan-based groups associated with al-Qaeda that may include bomb attacks and a possible armed raid on the Reichstag, Spiegel said.
Security officials haven’t received further signs of a possible attack since last week’s warning, an Interior Ministry spokesman told reporters today. Still, Germany faces a greater threat from terrorists than at any time in the past, more than during elections last year or the 2006 soccer World Cup, Matthias Seeger, the country’s federal police chief, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper yesterday.
Police Barricades
Police wearing bullet-proof vests set up barricades around the Reichstag. The dome is still open to accredited officials. Berlin police spokesman Michael Gassen confirmed that increased security measures were in place, though declined to give details on the number of police or risk level.
De Maiziere said last week that authorities had received intelligence following the discovery of bombs in air-cargo shipments last month -- and compared the threat level to the weeks before September 2009 federal elections.
“What’s new is that de Maiziere used to talk about an abstract terrorism danger,” Rolf Tophoven, a German terrorism expert, said in an N24 television interview. “Now he’s talking about a concrete danger.”
The federal authorities’ source told them that an Islamist group considered modeling an attack on the 2008 storming of the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai by assailants armed with grenades and rifles that killed 175 people, Der Spiegel said. Two men may already be in Berlin, while four others are poised to travel to Germany from al-Qaeda camps, the magazine said.
That intelligence followed a warning from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation that an Indian Shiite group planned an attack and that two volunteers with European Union visas were scheduled to arrive in the United Arab Emirates en route to Germany today, according to Spiegel.
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