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Germany Fears PKK Attack on Top Minister, News Report Claims

DPA news agency (nda)July 19, 2008

Police analysts in Germany fear that Kurdish rebels in Turkey may try to assassinate Germany's interior minister, the news magazine Focus reported in Munich on Saturday, July 19.

https://p.dw.com/p/EfGH
Wolfgang Schaeuble
Schaeuble may have become a target for the Kurdish separatist terror organizationImage: AP

Focus said the assessment, by the BKA federal police agency, was based on the fact that Kurdish media had been blaming the minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, for a ban on a Kurdish-language television channel in Germany.

Schaeuble shut down German offices of Danish-based Roj TV earlier this year and declared it no longer had a licence to broadcast in Germany, although its satellite signal can still be easily picked up by viewers inside Germany.

The Kurdish rebel group PKK this month kidnapped three German mountaineers on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey in anger at the move.

Focus said the secret BKA analysis suggested that "a personal risk to the minister is conceivable."

Focus said the BKA had also advised the German Foreign Ministry to expand its current "urgent" warning against travel by Germans to Kurdish areas. It urged the ministry to advise vacationers against visiting any part of Turkey at all.

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