Germans with dual nationality will lose their German citizenship if they fight for militant Islamist groups abroad under new anti-terror proposals.
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere also announced plans to speed up the deportation of foreign criminals.
He announced extra personnel, equipment and surveillance powers for the police.
But he rejected banning the public wearing of the burka (the Islamic full veil). And he resisted pressure to ease medical confidentiality.
Some of his conservative Christian Democrat (CDU) colleagues have urged a burka ban but Mr de Maiziere said it would be “problematic” and “you cannot ban everything that you reject”.
Mr de Maiziere was responding to recent attacks linked to militant Islamists. Two terror attacks by Islamist migrants shocked Germany last month – in Wuerzburg and Ansbach.
“I propose that German citizens who are fighting with terror militias in other countries, and take part in combat operations there, if they have a second nationality – and only then – they would lose German citizenship,” he told a news conference.
Read Next: Germany bans Islamist 'True Religion' group, raiding mosques and flats
There was a move in France recently to deprive jihadists of their French citizenship, but it did not get through parliament.
Read more at MSN
Image courtesy of Reuters
I am unsure how any of this is a deterrent. Threatening a citizenship status on a rather limited group of people who are more than likely prepared to die in their pursuits is doing less than nothing. At least with doing nothing you wouldn't have wasted time and resources coming up with this crap.
The burqa bit, well this doesn't even make sense. Banning a particular form of headdress will do nothing to curtail much of anything or solve any problem facing Germany. I despise the burqa because of what it means and has been used to do in terms of subjugating women, but banning it isn't going to stop any of that.
Come up with real solutions to real problems.