Elham Asaad Buaras
Twenty-five Muslim gravestones, including 14 Muslim baby gravestones, were destroyed last month in Hanover, Germany.
Leader of the Shura Association, Recep Bilgen, announced on November 22, “We have received some visuals showing that some Muslim gravestones in the Stöcken Cemetery in the northern state of Lower Saxony’s city of Hannover were vandalized.”
Bilgen drew attention to the fact that vandalism incidents in Muslim cemeteries have become more common in recent years.
Mosques have also received letters signed with the neo-Nazi alias “NSU 2.0,” referring to the National Socialist Underground (NSU), a terror group that killed eight Turkish immigrants, a Greek citizen, and a German policewoman between 2000 and 2007.
Bilgen said there should be an investigation into those attacks and the damage to the gravestones.
A spokesman for the Hanover police, Dennis Schmitt, told RTL that police are looking into everything. “State security has been alerted!”
Adding that they are not ruling out “natural causes by animals.” According to the police, there is currently no concrete evidence of an Islamophobic connection. Schmitt said, “The police take the incident very seriously!”
The city of Hanover official has also officially told RTL: “Vandalism in a cemetery is a disturbance of the peace of the dead and constitutes a criminal offence.” The police are already involved. The city administration regrets that the damage to the gravestones disturbs the affected relatives in their mourning. The city is in contact with the affected relatives.
“If this incident is confirmed as a crime, it must be condemned in the strongest possible terms,” said spokesman Dennis Dix.
