Metin Kaplan

Muhammed Metin Kaplan (born November 14, 1952 in Erzurum , Turkey ) - self-proclaimed " Caliph of Cologne " - is an Islamic fundamentalist who lived in Cologne and was deported to Turkey in 2004 .

resume

Kaplan comes from Turkey and came to Germany in August 1982 on a tourist visa, which was valid until December 25, 1982. An extension of the tourist visa was refused and Metin Kaplan was given three months to leave Germany. It is unclear whether Kaplan left the Federal Republic of Germany, because there are indications that he lived from 1983 to 1986 as a prayer leader for a mosque in Esslingen am Neckar . He was also an editor for the Union magazine of the Caliphate State. In July 1986 Kaplan returned to Germany on a legal tourist visa and moved to Cologne. He applied for asylum in 1988 . In 1992 that grantedFederal Office for the Recognition of Foreign Refugees Metin Kaplan Asylum, as the Cologne Administrative Court ruled that Kaplan was threatened with criminal prosecution in Turkey because he was the head of a fundamentalist movement.

As the successor to his father Cemalettin Kaplan , who died in 1995 , he led the radical association of the Caliphate State (see also Islamic Organizations in Germany ). It is unclear whether Metin Kaplan is actually the biological son of Cemalettin Kaplan. There are indications that he is the son of Cemalettin Kaplan's sister and was only adopted, which Metin Kaplan denies.

In 1996 he publicly called for the murder of his political opponent Ibrahim Sofu . After he had actually been shot in 1997, the city authorities began an expulsion procedure, which, after several court rulings, ended on October 12, 2004 with deportation. Kaplan is currently incarcerated in a Type F prison after being sentenced to life imprisonment for high treason in Turkey in mid-2006 . Due to the allegedly unfair trial in Turkey and the risk of torture , he could only be deported after years of trials in court. By the time he was deported, his files at the Cologne immigration authorities had grown to over 2500 pages. Metin Kaplan's wife and three children remained in Germany after he was deported.

From the 1990s until the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 , Metin Kaplan was the best-known Islamic fundamentalist in Germany. Until his deportation he received a lot of media attention. It was featured on the cover of Der Spiegel magazine in 2004/24. The issue was titled The Kaplan Case or: How the State allows itself to be presented by its opponents .

Public statements

A political opponent of Kaplan's, Halil Ibrahim Sofu, called Yusuf Hoca, who was proclaimed Counter-Caliph in Berlin , was murdered on May 8, 1997. Previously, Kaplan demanded the death of the counter-caliph in his union newspaper Ümmet-i Muhammed on July 19, 1996: “What happens to a person who, although there is a caliph, allows himself to be proclaimed a second caliph? This man is asked to express his repentance. If he does not show repentance, then he will be killed. "

A further radicalization of the Kaplans movement came about through a call from Kaplans on May 14, 1998: mobilization call for a general religious struggle .

Legal proceedings

From 1999 until the deportation in 2004 there were 23 proceedings in the Metin Kaplan and Kalifat cases before the administrative court in Cologne alone. There has also been proceedings before the following courts: Amtsgericht Köln , Cologne Regional Court , the Higher Regional Court Dusseldorf , Higher Administrative Court of Münster , Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig and the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe . It also concerned the repayment of social assistance from 1988 to 1999. He was supposed to repay 150,000 euros in social assistance that he, his wife and three children had received. Because the police had found and confiscated 2 million marks and kilos of gold during a search of his apartment in 1998 .

On the basis of the appeal for murder in 1996 and the call for mobilization for the general religious struggle in 1998, the Federal Prosecutor initiated an investigation against him and other persons from the leadership of the association on suspicion of the formation of a terrorist group and the murder of Ibrahim Sofu. After Metin Kaplan on 25 March 1999 by forces of the GSG 9 in pre-trial detention had been taken against him began on 8 February 2000, the process under the direction of the presiding judge Ottmar Breidling before the Higher Regional Court of Dusseldorf . At the same time it became known that the Kaplan movement should maintain contacts with Hezbollah (Turkey) . On November 15, 2000, Kaplan was sentenced to four years in prison for public appeal.

• On December 19, 2001, Interior Minister Otto Schily, in a meeting with his Turkish counterpart , demanded a promise that if Metin Kaplan was sentenced to death, the death penalty would not be carried out.
• On March 24, 2003, Kaplan's detention ended. As a result, the court issued an extradition arrest warrant, which is why he was not released.
• Kaplan was released from custody on May 27, 2003 after the Higher Regional Court rejected Kaplan's extradition to Turkey and the arrest warrant had been lifted.
• On August 27, 2003, the Cologne Administrative Court ruled that Kaplan was allowed to stay in Germany. Although he no longer had the right to asylum , he could not be deported either, as he was facing criminal proceedings that were not based on the rule of law in Turkey.
• On October 17, 2003, the Federal Constitutional Court upheld the December 2001 ban on the fundamentalist association “ Caliphate State ”.
• On December 4, 2003, the Münster Higher Administrative Court upheld the Cologne judgment, according to which Kaplan had no right to asylum.
• On December 11, 2003, around 1,100 apartments belonging to supporters of the banned “caliphate state” were searched in a nationwide raid , including Kaplan's apartment.
• On May 19, 2004, the Cologne Administrative Court confirmed Kaplan's expulsion requested by the City of Cologne . This means that Kaplan is only tolerated in Germany and no longer has a residence permit .
• On May 26, 2004, the Münster Higher Administrative Court ruled that there were no serious obstacles to Kaplan's deportation. The Cologne District Court then issued an arrest warrant at the request of the City of Cologne.
  Kaplan was not found at home when the arrest was attempted and was then put up for a search across Europe . However, the search and the arrest warrant were canceled or discontinued a day later on May 27, 2004 due to a decision by the Cologne Administrative Court , as the judgment of the Münster Higher Administrative Court was not yet final and an appeal was possible before the Federal Administrative Court . This information was withheld from the Cologne District Court when the arrest warrant was obtained, so that critics spoke of the warrant being cheated.
• On May 28, 2004, Kaplan submitted an application to the Cologne Immigration Office through his lawyer . It was later discovered that Kaplan was staying at a neighbor's apartment in the same building.
• On October 12, 2004, the Cologne Administrative Court rejected an application submitted by Kaplan for protection against deportation; Kaplan was deported to Turkey that evening and arrested by the Turkish authorities when he landed. He was accused of planning an assassination attempt on Ataturk's mausoleum in 1998. With the help of an airplane loaded with explosives, he wanted to kill the top government gathered in the mausoleum.
• On December 7, 2004, Kaplan's appeal against his deportation was rejected by the Federal Administrative Court.
• On June 20, 2005, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in Turkey . The judges of the Istanbul court found him guilty of high treason . The judgment followed the prosecutor's request . It has been proven that Kaplan ordered an attack on the Ataturk mausoleum in Ankara in 1998 . With the help of an airplane loaded with explosives, he wanted to kill the top government gathered in the mausoleum.
  Before the verdict was announced, he had stated that he did not consider the procedure to be under the rule of law. The court previously rejected an application for bias against the presiding judge.
• On November 30, 2005, the Supreme Court of Appeals overturned Kaplan's verdict. This was due to procedural errors and insufficient investigations. The new criminal law that came into force in June also had to apply in his case.
• In October 2008, a Turkish appeals court upheld the life sentence. Kaplan was found guilty again.
• On July 2, 2010, a court in Istanbul reduced the sentence to 17 years and six months.
• On November 16, 2016, Kaplan was released early from prison due to his cancer.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} G. Bönisch, A. Brandt, D. Cziesche, J. Dahlkamp, ​​D. Hipp, G. Latsch, G. Mascolo, C. Schmidt, H. Stark, M. Verbeet: Im Labyrinth des Kalifen . In: Der Spiegel , issue 24/2004, pp. 24–40. Retrieved May 10, 2012.
2. ↑ Klußmann: Extremisten - Der Tod des Kalifen In: Der Spiegel , Ed. 33/1997, p. 44f. Retrieved May 10, 2012.
3. ↑ quoted from: Ministry of the Interior and Justice of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia 1998b, p. 50.
4. ↑ a repetition of the call in German can be found in a leaflet dated August 22, 1998 (ibid. P. 52).
5. ↑ The original recordings of the arrest are part of the documentation GSG 9 - The special unit of Dietmar Noss
6. ↑ welt.de (AP / lk): The "Caliph of Cologne" remains in prison for life , accessed on October 20, 2008
7. ↑ Stern.de: "Kalif von Köln" in Turkey sentenced to more than 17 years imprisonment ( Memento from July 21, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (from July 2, 2010)
8. ↑ http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/metin-kaplana-hastalik-tahliyesi-40279222