Last week, German city-state Bremen shut down the Al-Mustafa Community Center,
citing the organization’s close association with Hezbollah and its call


<[link removed]>
<[link removed]>
Germany Shutters Pro-Hezbollah Organization In Bremen Amid Terror Group’s
Rising Popularity

 

(New York, N.Y.) — Last week, German city-state Bremen shut down
<[link removed]> the Al-Mustafa Community
Center, citing the organization’s close association with Hezbollah and its
calls for acts of terrorism against Israel. The order from German officials
effectively prohibits the use of the association’s labels in public, requires
all activities to cease, and ensures the premises are closed. It is the latest
in a series of actions German authorities have taken against the
Hezbollah-aligned community center.

 

Bremen’s intelligence service previously identified the community center in
2018 as a hub for fundraising on behalf of Hezbollah. Authorities raided the
center in April 2020 as part of the ban of all Hezbollah’s activities in
Germany by the federal government. In July that same year, authorities accused
some 50 members of the center of being “involved in the financial support” of
Hezbollah by sending funds to Lebanese families of deceased Hezbollah fighters.

 

The shuttering of the Al-Mustafa center is the latest move on the European
continent to defend against the Hezbollah threat, which has extended across the
Middle East, Europe, South America, and Asia for more than four decades.
Nonetheless, the European Union has designated only Hezbollah’s so-called
military wing as a terrorist organization, despite Hezbollah’s leaders
themselves clearly stating the group is a singular entity. In early 2018, a
group of 60 European parliamentarians, led by MPs from Denmark, Sweden, and
Hungary, wrote to EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini that Hezbollah
should be designated in its entirety.

 

While the European Union maintains its designation of only Hezbollah’s
so-called military wing, since 2019 the United Kingdom, Germany, Latvia, the
Czech Republic, Estonia, and Slovenia have all banned Hezbollah as a whole.
Additionally, the United States, Canada, Israel, and multiple other nations
around South America and the Middle East have designated Hezbollah as a whole
as a terrorist group. The Netherlands had previously banned Hezbollah in its
entirety in 2004.

 

Despite Germany’s ban on the group, the number of Hezbollah supporters in
Germany is increasing. On June 4, 2021, the Federal Office for the Protection
of the Constitution reported that the number of supporters of Hezbollah in
Germany dramatically increased in 2020. Support for the group reportedly grew
by more than 19 percent year-over-year from 2019 to 2020 with an estimated1,250
known followers
<[link removed]>
in the country.

 

To read the Counter Extremism Project (CEP)’s resource Germany: Extremism and
Terrorism, please click here
<[link removed]>.

 

To read the CEP resource Hezbollah, please click here
<[link removed]>.

 

###

 

Unsubscribe
<[link removed]>