The Independent (UK)
www.independent.co.uk
Tariq Ali: Karl Marx led to my arrest as a terrorist in Germany
======================================'After 11 September, you can't travel with books like this, said the
arresting officer'
30 October 2001
I was arrested at Munich airport at 7am yesterday. After one day of
interviews and book signings and two days spent at a Goethe Institute
seminar on "Islam and the Crisis", I was desperate for a cup of coffee. I
checked in and soon my hand luggage was wending its way through the
security
machine.
No metal objects were detected, but they insisted on dumping the contents
of
my bag onto a table. Newspapers, dirty underpants, shirts, magazines and
books tumbled out in full view. Since news always reaches Germany a day
after it has appeared in the US press, I thought the locals might be
looking
for envelopes containing powder in ignorance of FBI and CIA briefings that
Osama bin Laden and Iraq were considered unlikely to be involved in the
anthrax scare.There were no envelopes in my bag.
The machine-minder brushed aside the copies of the Sued-deutsche Zeitung
(SDZ), the International Herald Tribune and Le Monde Diplomatique. He
appeared to be very interested in The Times Literary Supplement and was
inspecting my scribbled notes on the margin of a particular book review
when
his eyes fell on a slim volume in German that had been handed to me by a
local publisher. Since there had been no time to flick through the volume,
it was still wrapped in cellophane. He grasped the text eagerly and then,
in
a state of some excitement, rushed it over to the armed policeman.
The offending book was an essay by Karl Marx, On Suicide. It was the
reference to suicide that had got the policemen really excited. They barely
registered the author, though when they did real panic set in and there
were
agitated exchanges. The way they began to watch me was an indication of
their state of mind. They really thought they had got someone. My passport
and boarding card were taken from me, I was rudely instructed to re-pack my
bag, minus the crucial "evidence" (the SDZ, the TLS and the offending text
by Marx), and I was escorted out of the departure area and taken to the
police headquarters at the airport.
On the way there the arresting officer gave me a triumphant smile. "After
11
September, you can't travel with books like this," he said. "In that case,"
I replied, "perhaps you should stop publishing them in Germany, or, better
still, burn them in public view."
Inside headquarters, another officer informed me that it was unlikely I'd
be
boarding the BA flight and they would make inquiries about later
departures.
At this point my patience evaporated and I demanded to use a phone. "Who do
you want to ring?" he said. "The Mayor of Munich," I replied. "His name is
Christian Ude. He interviewed me about my books and the present crisis on
Friday evening at Hugendubel's bookshop. I wish to inform him of what is
taking place."
The police officer disappeared. A few minutes later another officer (this
one sported a beard) appeared and beckoned me to follow him. He escorted me
to the flight, which had virtually finished boarding. We did not exchange
words. On the plane a German fellow passenger came and expressed his dismay
at the police behaviour. He told me how the policeman who had detained me
had returned to boast to other passengers of how his vigilance had led to
my
arrest.
It was a trivial enough episode, but indicative of the mood of the Social
Democrat-Green alliance that rules Germany today. It is almost as if many
of
those who are in power are trying desperately to exorcise their own pasts.
While Chancellor Gerhard Schröder was in Pakistan insisting that there
could
be no pause in the bombing and that the war of attrition would continue,
his
Minister for the Interior, Otto Schily, was busy masterminding the new
security laws, which threaten traditional civil liberties.
Mr Schily, once a radical lawyer and a friend of the generation of 1968,
first acquired public notoriety when he became the defence lawyer for the
Baader-Meinhof gang, an urban terrorist network active in the Seventies. It
was said at the time that he also supported their activities.
In 1980, Mr Schily joined the Greens and was their key spokesman in the
fight against the stationing of Cruise and Pershing missiles in Germany. In
1989, he moved further by joining the Social Democrats. Today he is busy
justifying extra powers for the police and instilling a sense of "realism"
in his Green coalition partners.
One of the "realist" proposals being discussed is granting jurisdiction to
the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (the German
equivalent of the FBI) so that it has the right to spy on individuals it
suspects of working against the "causes of international understanding or
the peaceful coexistence of nations". And since - in the debased coinage of
the present - "peaceful coexistence of nations" includes waging war against
some of them, I suppose that my experience was a dress rehearsal for what
is
yet to come. It was a tiny enough scratch, but, if untreated, these can
lead
to gangrene.
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