Berlin police defend cooperation with filmmaker of Islamist video

The producer of a rap video by the Berlin police is part of the project Kiezbezogener Netzwerkaufbau (KBNA) in Police Section 36 in Berlin-Gesundbrunnen. The district has a high proportion of foreigners and migrants. Already two years ago, 61.6 percent of the local population had foreign roots.

As described in the credits of the video, the director and producer of the video is Tahsin Ozkan. The Turkish-born video maker made a video for the rapper SadiQ two years ago.

For the Berlin police, Ozkan’s new music video entitled “Füunderander!” [There for each other!] wants to advertise “tolerance and respect” according to their own statement.

“The police of Berlin is fully behind the project,” said the authority when approached by German weekly Junge Freiheit. The producer was selected and commissioned “because of his extensive knowledge of the music scene, his experience as a music producer and his social commitment”.

They say he has distanced himself from glorifying Islamist ideas. Since then, he has generally refused to accept orders of a similar nature. “In addition, Ozkan was not selected directly by the police, but rather by the association” neighbourhood-based networks”, with which the police cooperate.

Nevertheless, the authority quickly added: “We expressly dissociate ourselves from violence-glorifying, inhuman and similar texts by any rappers”.

In the song entitled “Charlie Hebdo” the singer glorifies the Islamist terrorist attack on the eponymous satirical magazine. Among other things it says: “Come with the AK” and: “Aim at the draftsman of the cartoon / Burn the pages of the Charlie Cartoons / Pierce the bulls at the Paris Tower.”

The Brandenburg State Office of Criminal Investigation applied for indexing the music video. It is the first “from extremist Islamism,” the agency said in early 2017.

Other titles on the announced but not yet released album are called “Paris” and “Taliban”. Sadiq, whose real name is Sadiq Zadran, operates a snack bar in Frankfurt am Main, according to the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper.