German federal criminal police investigate Hamas Twitter accounts due to propaganda materials
German Green Party politician Volker Beck filed a formal police complaint, seeking to remove the jihadist terror organization Hamas from the micro-blogging site Twitter.
“The accounts of the Hamas must disappear from Twitter! Twitter supports a terrorist organization by providing infrastructure. This is punishable in Germany according to §129b StGB,” leading pro-Israel advocate Beck wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.
He tagged the Twitter feeds off the Federal Criminal Police Office of Germany and the country’s federal prosecutor’s office, urging both agencies to look closely at his complaint.
Beck told The Jerusalem Post that: “The federal attorney ordered the German federal police – the German FBI – to examine if an investigation and accusation against those responsible for Twitter should be started for endorsing the terroristic organization Hamas.”
Legal section 129 that Beck included in his Tweet refers to criminal penalties against foreign “terrorist and criminal associations.”
According to a Post examination of a German intelligence report published this year, there are 320 Hamas members and supporters in the federal republic. It is unclear why German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s administration has not prosecuted them. The European Union and the United States classify Hamas as a terrorist organization.
In response to Hamas’s presence on Twitter, US ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell tweeted last month: “Why is Twitter allowing a terrorist organization to use its platform? They need to revamp their guidelines immediately.”
In response to a 2018 Post article, Hamas wrote on its official English Twitter account Sunday: “German FM describes the Israeli occupation as an apartheid regime like the one was [sic] in South Africa.”
In December, 2017, Germany’s former Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel told a group of Muslim immigrants in Berlin that he had previously criticized Israel. The German top diplomat reiterated this in a 2012 Facebook post, following his visit to Hebron, in which he wrote: “I was just in Hebron. There’s a legal vacuum there for Palestinians. This is an apartheid regime, for which there is no justification.”
The German Foreign Ministry did not walk back Gabriel’s criticism of the Jewish state in an email statement to the Post. Gabriel is widely considered by critics in the US, Germany and Israel to be anti-Israel and pro-Iranian regime.
Merkel also permits 1,050 Hezbollah members to raise funds, recruit new members and spread antisemitic and jihadi ideologies in Germany. Hezbollah and Hamas are two of Israel’s most serious enemies. Merkel claims Israel’s security is “non-negotiable” for her administration and Germany.
Source: JP
