German police raid PKK-affiliated organization’s Hannover office

BERLIN

A German public prosecutor’s office has said police searched the office of NAV-DEM, an organization linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), in Hannover on suspicion of support for terrorism, state-run anadolu Agency reported on April 6. 

“Several people are suspected of supporting the PKK’s illegal structures in Germany and recruiting Kurdish youth for the PKK,” Frank Padberg, spokesman of the public prosecutor’s office in Luneburg, told Bild newspaper.

The PKK has been banned in Germany since 1993 but it is still active with nearly 14,000 followers, according to the country’s domestic intelligence agency BfV.

NAV-DEM organized various protests across the country since Jan. 20 against Turkey’s military operation in northwestern Syria.

PKK-affiliated groups and far-left organizations claimed responsibility for more than two dozens of attacks on Turkish mosques, associations and shops in various German cities, including Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Aachen.

Turkey has long criticized German authorities for “tolerating” PKK activities in the country and pressured Berlin to take stricter measures against the propaganda, recruitment and fundraising activities of the group.