[The Guardian] Free to study terror
Germany's respect for civil liberties made it the perfect place for potential terrorists to study undisturbed. But, says John Hooper, that could be about to change
Tuesday September 25, 2001
"The first thing that people who come here from the business world remark on is how clean the university is", said Professor Dierk Feldmann. "And it's true. 20 years after it was founded, you can't even find any graffiti here."
Prof Feldmann is dean of the faculty of mechanical engineering in the Technical University of Harburg. Since September 11, this neat little college, built around a pretty artificial lake in a middle-class suburb of Hamburg, has become one of the most famous seats of learning on Earth. Not, unfortunately, because of its academic distinction.
A list of suspects drawn up by investigators probing the terrorist attacks on the US contains no less than five past and present students of the technical university.
Prof Feldmann taught at least one of them - Marwan al-Shehhi, who died aboard United Airlines flight 175, the second plane to smash into the World Trade Centre on September 11. Al-Shehhi was seen in Florida before the attacks with Mohamed Atta, a former research student in the town-planning department at Hamburg.
Atta, who was known on campus as el-Amir, is thought to have been at the controls of American Airlines flight 11, the plane that started the mayhem in Manhattan.
A third suspect is still enrolled at the university. Said Bahaji who, university sources say, studied computer science, disappeared from Hamburg at the start of September. He is believed by investigators to have headed for Pakistan.
Two other current students who figure on the list are also missing, university sources say. But their names and the subjects they were studying have not been disclosed. Two more suspects studied at other universities in Hamburg.
It is not difficult to see why the conspirators behind the attacks might have chosen Germany's second biggest city as a basis for their operation. Hamburg has the country's largest population of foreigners - 15% of the total. They include between 150,000 and 200,000 Muslims, though the vast majority are Turks rather than Arabs.
What is more difficult to understand is: why Harburg Technical University? By the standards of continental Europe, it is tiny, with just 5,000 students. "This is not an easy place in which to go unnoticed", said Prof Feldmann.
Mohamed Atta, who is thought by investigators to have played a key role in the plot, was one of only 40 students in his department. After seven years on the campus, he was well known to his professor, other members of the staff and his fellow students.
The unnerving conclusion with which some at the university are toying is that the conspirators really did not mind where they established themselves -- so long as it was in Germany. Senior members of the staff say that they were not aware of any systematic surveillance of the Technical University.
Germany is a country with a paradoxical attitude to civil liberties. Most of the time, they are respected scrupulously - and several German commentators have speculated this was what attracted the planners of the September 11 attacks.
Germany has one of the world's most detailed and restrictive laws on data protection. Its newspapers tread sensitively when dealing with the private lives of celebrities and politicians, unless there is an obvious public interest motive. Its courts are loth to ban even the most aggressively extreme political groups.
And, an important consideration in the present context, German law extends special privileges to organisations whose stated aims are religious.
But liberal modern Germany is also a society which, when faced with a threat, can switch rapidly into draconian mode. The clampdown on terrorism in the days when the Baader Meinhof gang was shaking the foundations of society was ferocious: anyone linked to the radical left risked being barred from public employment.
And what we may be seeing now is the beginning of just such a rapid switch. The government has already said it intends to abolish the special privileges for confessional associations, despite howls of protest from religious leaders.
A cool DM3bn (almost £1bn) is to be raised for additional security. Half is expected to go to the armed forces and the rest is being earmarked for protecting the borders and airports. There is talk of altering the data protection laws and of a more restrictive immigration law than had been originally planned.
All this raises a question with implications that go beyond Germany's frontiers: can Gerhard Schröder's government survive the crisis?
His Social Democrats are in coalition with the Greens, the most libertarian- as well as the most pacifist-minded of the mainstream parties. There have already been audible rumblings of discontent from the Greens' rank and file over the unequivocal support extended by Mr Schröder to the US.
It remains to be seen whether the Greens would be willing to remain inside an administration that was also energetically cutting back on civil liberties.
Email john.hooper at guardian.co.uk