Icon: enlarge
Interior Senator Andreas Geisel: "The attack on Breitscheidplatz caught us off guard back then"
Photo: Christoph Soeder / dpa
On the fourth anniversary of the attack on Breitscheidplatz in Berlin, the Berlin Senator for the Interior, Andreas Geisel (SPD), presented a new anti-terror concept for the capital.
"The attack on Breitscheidplatz caught us off guard back then," said Geisel.
The attack showed that "the security authorities had too few resources and that they were not well positioned in some areas."
The aim of the new concept is to set "a sign of determination".
According to Geisel, the new anti-terror plan with the name »SAVE« is based on four pillars: protect, educate, prevent, contain.
There are no simple answers to the still “abstract high risk situation”, “even if populists like to claim the opposite,” said Geisel.
Repression is important, but medium and long-term prevention is "much more effective and important".
New security law in progress
In order to ensure better protection against attacks, a new security law is in the works, which, among other things, will bundle the approval of major events in one hand.
Better equipment for the police and the construction of training centers should strengthen the authorities' ability to act.
The security authorities should also work more closely together and communicate more effectively in order to identify dangers at an early stage and to systematically prosecute corresponding crimes.
According to Geisel, a central component of the concept is also deradicalization and radicalization prevention.
The funds for such programs have been quintupled in the current budget, "and it is still not enough," said the Interior Senator.
In this area, cooperation with civil society organizations is to be expanded.
On December 19, 2016, an Islamist attacker kidnapped a truck in Berlin.
He drove through the Christmas market at the Memorial Church and killed twelve people, dozens were injured.
Icon: The mirror
mfh / AFP
