Researcher says criminal clans created no-go zones in Berlin

Ghadban listed the “no-go areas” in the German capital as Cottbusser Tor, the Tiergarten, and Neukölln, explaining that they were “dangerous areas, so-called no-go areas, in which Arab clans have the upper hand,” Augsburger Allgemeine reported.

“No-go areas are law-free areas. Policemen are persecuted, besieged, and harassed. Policewomen are groped. They receive threats from gang members such as ‘we know where you live’ or ‘we know where your children go to school’”, Ghadban said.

Arab clans have been around in Germany for decades, according to the researcher, but it has been the multicultural ideology that has allowed them to expand.

He sais that these clans were different from other organised crime groups. “In organised crime, criminals come together voluntarily to jointly plan and carry out crimes. There is a possibility of leaving; in addition, the group can be infiltrated by police.

“But you are born into the clan, you have no choice. The kinship creates a clan solidarity, the members cover each other. Everyone keeps silent in court,” he explained.

When asked if he thought his statements could be construed as support for the anti-mass migration party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), Ghadban said, “I have made these statements for over 20 years; at that time there was no AfD.”

He denounced the criticism. “This criticism is dangerous, it corresponds to the attitude of political correctness, which suppresses free opinions, prevents a factual confrontation with topics, and leaves it to the radicals,” he said.

The head of the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), Holger Münch, has recently warned that newly arrived North African migrants could soon form their own clans. He urged law enforcement to focus on the new arrivals.

Ghadban also stressed that similar clan structures exist “among the Chechens, the Albanians, and the Kosovars. These are family structures that have been brought from home and have demonstrated their efficiency in the criminal sector using the Mhallamiye [clan] as an example. The danger of imitation is thus a given”.

Police warn that the clans have sought out new members from among migrant influx. The clans “are trying to get others to do the dirty work” such as selling drugs or committing small burglaries, said Benjamin Jendro of the GDP police union.

“Men who have arrived alone in Germany” and who “have not yet had to do with the justice system,” will make it less likely that they will go to prison if caught, Jendro added.

An undercover police investigator also told Die Welt newspaper that “above all, it is the young, physically strong men who are in the sights of the clans, who make them do the dirty work”.

Sociologists told AFP that the story of Berlin’s clans is a cautionary tale about failed integration. Ghadban blames it on a “fear of stigmatizing and discriminating against certain minorities”.