Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/ GERMANY: German police launched a probe against supporters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) after they staged a protest in Dortmund.
The PKK is a Kurdish militant political organization that operates throughout Kurdistan is primarily based in the mountainous Kurdish-majority regions of southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq.
The German authorities said that after demonstrations that were attended by 320 PKK supporters, as many as 25 people from the group had verbal arguments with others but the incidents settled before they escalated because of the intervention of the German police.
Police Investigation
A Dortmund police said that an investigation has been launched into an incident that disturbed the peace and physical violence. Police urged witnesses to contact authorities and share information.
Images of the PKK supporters attacking one or more people with flagpoles and destroying property went viral on social media.
The PKK is classified as an ethnic-nationalist and separatist terror organisation by the EU’s law enforcement agency, EUROPOL, and has been banned in Germany since 1993.
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, BfV, has warned in its annual report that PKK remains the largest foreign extremist group in a country and its followers carry out violent attacks if they have received instructions from group leaders abroad.
Turkey has long called on its NATO ally Germany to take stronger action against the PKK and its Syrian affiliate, YPG, stressing that a terror groups use Germany as the platform for fund-raising and propaganda.
In its more than 35-year terror campaign against Turkey, the PKK had responsibility for the deaths of 40,000 people.
