When I wrote about Obama’s and Loretta Lynch’s DOJ pondering how criminal background checks are inhibiting police “diversity,” I wasn’t aware that in Germany it is against the law for the military to conduct background checks prior to formal employment.
Unsurprisingly, Germany is finding a number of its newer recruits are Islamists seeking formal military training. In fact, they are requesting to join for only a few months with the sole purpose of undergoing “intensive weapon and equipment training.”
Germany’s military counter-intelligence agency (MAD) has discovered that a number of the country’s enlisted soldiers hold Islamist beliefs and joined the army in order to receive training in advanced weaponry and tactics, according to German media reports.Germany’s Die Welt newspaper reported on Saturday that MAD had uncovered some 20 soldiers as Islamists and another 60 were placed under surveillance over Islamist orientations.The intelligence agency said that “individual inquiries from applicants who are interested in the service of the Bundeswehr [German military] in striking manner, express a commitment request of only a few months and are expressly interested in intensive weapon and equipment training,” Die Welt reported.. . . . Under German law, background checks can only take place after formal employment.
It isn’t clear what is happening with these 20 soldiers known to be Islamists who joined up for a crash course in military training, but according to i24, a German defense spokesman said that the government aims to “respond adequately to the changed security situation and prevent the use of the Bundeswehr as a training facility for potential terrorists, extremists and trafficked persons.”
As part of a defense plan announced this past summer, the German military has requested that it be able to perform background checks prior to accepting new recruits . . . beginning in July of 2017.
The Daily Mail reported at the time:
[T]he armed forces wants new applicants to undergo a security check by the agency, starting in July 2017, so they can swiftly spot extremists, terrorists and criminals.
Such security screening would require changes in the laws governing the military.
A draft document justifying such changes, seen by Welt am Sonntag, said there were indications that Islamists are trying to get ‘so-called short-term servicemen into the armed forces’ for training.
The legislation to change the law to permit background and security checks prior to enlistment in the German military is apparently working its way through German parliament.
Draft legislation to be considered by the German parliament in coming weeks would mandate investigations of all recruits to counter efforts by the Islamic State jihadist group to infiltrate the military and obtain weapons training, Funke Mediengruppe reported.
Germany, as we’ve been covering here at LI, has seen an alarming number of mostly young male Middle Eastern refugees flood across its borders in the past couple of years. i24 News reports that the German military is expected to increase by over 14,000 in the coming years.
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