Row breaks out in Germany over police powers

GERMANY:German interior minister Wolfgang Schäuble has come under fire for suggesting that police should be allowed kill suspects believed to be planning terrorist attacks.

Critics have accused the minister of waging a one-man war on terrorism - and Germany's postwar constitutional principles - and of being motivated by an attack 17 years ago that left him wheelchair- bound.

"Al-Qaeda is apparently once again capable of acting and Germany is threatened. All of us in the West are in the crosshairs of terrorism," said Mr Schäuble, explaining his motivation yesterday.

He dismisses critics of his proposals to tighten criminal law, which he says is necessary to reflect new threats. "There's a certain hysteria being created in the public debate. But the vast majority of people of course know that this is necessary."

In recent months, Mr Schäuble has made a number of anti-terrorism proposals: new protective custody laws, remote computer surveillance, cross-referencing motorway toll station data, and a ban on mobile phones for criminals. He has even suggested allowing domestic military deployments in times of crisis, a taboo since Hitler abused the military to secure his power.

Yesterday, German president Horst Köhler took the unusual step of intervening in the debate and criticising a minister. "One could think about whether the way in which these suggestions have come - in particular the staccato approach - is really optimal.

"How are people supposed to take this all in?" he asked in a television interview about Mr Schäuble's proposals. Mr Köhler said he was "confident solutions will be found that do justice to our constitutional principles".

Law and order is gearing up to be an ideological battleground between the Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Social Democrat (SPD) coalition partners, who control the interior and justice ministries respectively.

SPD leader Kurt Beck has called on Chancellor Merkel to reign in her minister, saying Mr Schäuble wanted to "protect freedom to death".

"He is suggesting that German police could be used to kill terrorism suspects as quasi contract killers," said Ralf Stegner, an SPD state interior minister. "His behaviour is so shabby it has reached the limit of what one can call responsible holding of office." Politicians from across the spectrum have criticised Mr Schäuble for not backing up his suggestions with any detail.

The centre-left Süddeutsche Zeitung went further, asking whether Mr Schäuble is motivated by an attack in 1990 when an unstable man shot him in the back, shattering his spine and confining him to a wheelchair.

"Whoever experiences and tries to overcome their own physical weakness every day . . . can tolerate the real or believed weaknesses of colleagues and even the state much less than before," suggested the paper's chief leader writer, Heribert Prantl.

Mr Schäuble hit back yesterday at the media psychoanalysis, calling it a "defamatory insult".