Two weeks ago in an interview with SPIEGEL (“We could be struck at anytime”) German Interior Minister Schäuble has opened a long overdue debate on how to deal with the terrorist threat in Germany. Questions any Interior Minister would have to ask if he was to take his job seriously. Unfortunately, he was – willingly or unwillingly – misunderstood by most of the mainstream media journalists and most politicians, sadly, including even our Bundespräsident Horst Köhler.
Not only that Schäuble did not get answers to his questions, no. He is now regarded as a security risk, is accused of violating the Constitution, creating hysteria and wanting to turn Germany into a police-state.
Somehow, it seems as if a lot of people were more scared of our Interior Minister than of Osama bin Laden. THAT is scaring.
And if there has been a scandal in all of this, then in my view it is the saddening fact that Wolfgang Schäuble`s disability – he is confined to a wheelchair since an assassination attempt in 1990 – has been turned against him in this political “debate”.
Heribert Prantl in an article called „Der Misstrauer“ (Süddeutsche Zeitung, July 9) wrote:
Whomsoever experiences his own physical weakness everyday and attempts to overcome it, he seems unable to tolerate the real or imagined weaknesses of his colleagues. He is also able to tolerate the real or imagined weaknesses of the state even less than in the past.
Even those who do not agree with Schäuble should defend him against this kind of “criticism”.
And now excerpts of the “We Could Be Struck at Anytime” SPIEGEL interview with German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble conducted by Stefan Aust, Marcel Rosenbach and Holger Stark, July 9, 2007:
(…)
SPIEGEL: Terrorism thrives on spreading fear. Is it wise for the interior minister and his state secretary to participate in this interplay and compare the situation today with the one shortly before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks?
Schäuble: When we say the likelihood of an attack is greater than ever before, there is no fearmongering involved in that. It is a representation of reality. Unfortunately, the public tends to believe we are not threatened. (…)
SPIEGEL: In your view, the regular security policy tools are insufficient for dealing with Islamic terrorism, because it represents a blend of crime and war. Are you searching for a third way beyond adversary criminal law and the classic constitutional state?
Schäuble: The fact is that the old categories no longer apply. We are not waging a classic war in Afghanistan, but the international legal order does not fit there either, which is why we need new concepts. The fight against international terrorism cannot be mastered by the classic methods of the police, in any case. If for example potential terrorists, so-called endangerers, cannot be extradited — what do we do with them? One could, for example, create a law making conspiracy a criminal offense, as the United States has done. But the other question is: Can one treat such endangerers like combatants and detain them?
SPIEGEL: You want preventative detention for Islamists?
Schäuble: No. But we have to clarify whether our constitutional state is sufficient for confronting the new threats. So-called preventive detention already exists today — for hooligans at soccer games, for example — albeit with tight legal restrictions. And we must discuss whether the degree of prevention that is already a feature of our police laws today is sufficient. One could for example impose conditions on someone who cannot be extradited, such as a ban on Internet or mobile phone communication. The legal problems extend all the way to extreme cases such as so-called targeted killing …
SPIEGEL: … meaning the systematic assassination of suspects by the state. Your predecessor Otto Schily already threatened Islamists with such a measure when he said: “Those who love death can have it.”
Schäuble: Imagine someone knew what cave Osama bin Laden is sitting in. A remote-controlled missile could then be fired in order to kill him.
SPIEGEL: Germany’s federal government would probably send a public prosecutor there first, to arrest bin Laden …
Schäuble: … and the Americans would execute him with a missile, and most people would say: Thank God. But let us be honest: The legal questions involved would be completely open, especially if Germans were involved. We should try to clarify such questions as precisely as possible in constitutional law, and create legal bases that give us the necessary liberties in the struggle against terrorism. I think nothing of citing a supra-legal state of emergency, in accordance with the motto: “Necessity knows no law.”
This passage was interpreted as if Schäuble was in favour of pre-emptive targeted killings of terror suspects in Germany. Something he has never suggested.
SPIEGEL: You stretch the constitutional state to its limits when you reshape it into a state of prevention and thereby also accept state killings.
Schäuble: Oh, not at all! Just take a look at the police laws of Germany’s states: The so-called final saving gunshot has long featured there. Our constitution would fall apart if we did not adjust it, especially when it comes to such central issues. Whoever wants to preserve freedom has to act when social circumstances have changed. We no longer live in the world of 1949.
SPIEGEL: Could it be the price of security is so high that the constitutional state abandons itself for fear of terror?
Schäuble: The opposite is correct. The liberal constitution would be threatened if we were to create the impression that we can provide less protection than other, less democratic state forms. That is the lesson learned from Weimar. I am an enthusiastic adherent of the liberal, rule-of-law constitution. But if we do not want terrorists to take it away from us, we must act.
SPIEGEL: Would it not be timely — six years after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and in light of Guantanamo — for the German interior minister to say: We are vigilant, but we will not cross a certain red line, because that would irrevocably transform our society?
Schäuble: I cannot accept this question. I would like to see a less hysterical discussion culture. The red line is very simple: It is always defined by the constitution, which can however be changed. A proposal to modify constitutional law is not an attack on the constitution. To me, strengthening the idea of prevention also means strengthening the constitution, because it gives people faith. (…)
“We Could Be Struck at Anytime”, Part 2: ‘The Internet Has Become the Central Medium for Islamists’:
(…)
SPIEGEL: You create the impression of wanting to settle the question of guilt pre-emptively now, in case a bomb explodes.
Schäuble: No, but the Internet has become the central medium for Islamists, and whoever does not see this has not understood the signs of the times. The issue is pressing. I cannot wait until after the beginning of the next legislative period.
SPIEGEL: Biometric ID cards, video surveillance, flight passenger data, scent samples, Tornado jets above Heiligendamm: By acting in this martial manner, are you not fraudulently presenting citizens with an alleged security increase you in fact cannot guarantee?
Schäuble: But I am always the one who says there is no such thing as 100 percent security. As interior minister, I don’t act as if we have everything under control either. Before the 2006 FIFA World Cup and before the G-8 summit in Heiligendamm, I said there is no guarantee everything will remain calm. That is why I refuse to be characterized as someone who conveys a false impression of security by adopting an especially martial manner.
SPIEGEL: Can you understand that your advances cause many citizens to feel uneasy?
Schäuble: I know there are fears and that this also only meets with limited approval in opinion polls. It’s a bit like with the population census. That is why I demand of political leadership that it takes these fears seriously but does not give in to them. We must try to convince people. I advertize it and explain it, and I do nothing secretly. I do it on clear bases in constitutional law.
SPIEGEL: A T-shirt featuring your face and the words “Stasi 2.0″ is a sales hit on the Internet. Are you familiar with it?
Schäuble: Not until now. In that case, if I may put it ironically, at least the free market economy has asserted itself. But seriously: That is the result of frivolous public debates and frivolous reporting, and it annoys me. When I have discussions with 15- or 16-year-old students, then it does hurt me to see the results of these debates. These children, who have no inhibitions about circulating all their data on the Internet, now believe they are living in a state where they are under around-the-clock surveillance by the interior minister.
SPIEGEL: But it was you and your colleagues who contributed to this feeling by taking scent samples of G-8 critics and with low-flying Tornado jets above the protest camps at the G-8 summit in Heiligendamm.
Schäuble: Not the interior minister. On that issue, you must consult the Office of the Federal Prosecutor, the interior minister of (the eastern German state of) Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and the Defense Ministry.
SPIEGEL: We’re talking about a widespread impression in the population…
Schäuble: … which is often shaped by incomplete information. You don’t seriously want to claim that taking a scent sample of three suspects even remotely has anything to do with the practices of the Stasi (the secret police in the former East Germany)! When that is how this is reported on TV and in the press, and when politicians also talk that way, then 14-year-old secondary school students believe that is how it is.
That is in fact the key problem here. And calling it “incomplete information” is putting things very nicely.
SPIEGEL: Given your vehement call for a strong state, you ought to endorse the fact that the Munich public prosecutor’s office has requested the arrest of the three alleged CIA agents who kidnapped Khalid al-Masri, the German citizen of Lebanese descent, in 2004. Why did you criticize the dogedness of the German judiciary in this case?
Schäuble: We are literally vitally dependent on cooperation with other intelligence agencies, especially the Americans. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to bear the responsibility for the security of this country as interior minister. On the other hand, intelligence agencies are also bound to observe the law. But the United States take the view that it is best for them to manage that themselves. We should respect that.
SPIEGEL: Minister Schäuble, we thank you for this interview.
Interview conducted by Stefan Aust, Marcel Rosenbach and Holger Stark.
Also read:
“Who´s afraid of a German Guantanamo?” by Anjana Shrivastava, July 16, 2007, WELT-Online