German mosque of 9/11 hijackers shut down

GERMAN police yesterday shut down a mosque in Hamburg frequented by suicide hijackers from the September 11, 2001 attacks and suspected of recruiting jihadists, authorities said.

An affiliated cultural centre called Taiba was also banned.

“Hamburg must not become a cradle of violent Islamists,” said the city-state’s chief interior affairs official, Christoph Ahlhaus.

“We closed the Taiba mosque today because young men were converted to religious fanatics there. A purported cultural association shamelessly exploited the freedoms of our democratic state under the rule of law to recruit for holy war behind the scenes”.

Three of the September 11 hijackers including their ringleader Mohammed Atta, who piloted the first plane into New York’s World Trade Centre, met regularly at the mosque before moving to the US.

Authorities said the prayer house, in the multiethnic Sankt Georg district, had served for several years as a recruitment centre for Islamic extremists, including accomplices of the hijackers, and offered logistical and financial assistance to militants.

Ahlhaus said Taiba had a sophisticated programme of courses, sermons, seminars and online publications to whip up hatred of “non-believers”.

“We do not tolerate organisations that are levelled against the constitutional order and the idea of understanding between cultures in an aggressive, militant way,” he said.