BERLIN, Dec 12: The German government cracked down on Wednesday on an extreme Muslim organization regarded as a “state within a state”, banning the so-called caliphate and mounting raids on some 200 premises across the country.

Interior Minister Otto Schily announced that he had banned the Cologne-based association, a related foundation called “The Servants of Islam” and 19 member organizations.

The Hilafet Devleti association, or caliphate, headed by the jailed so-called Caliph of Cologne, the Turkish national Metin Kaplan, has a total of about 1,100 members in Germany, according to the ministry.

The ban was accompanied by police raids early on Wednesday on 212 premises in the German states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Bavaria, Rhineland-Palatinate, Hesse, Berlin and Lower Saxony, the ministry said.

Hundreds of police officers descended on offices and a mosque associated with Kaplan in Cologne and the property of the caliphate was seized, police said. Some 30 people in the buildings were sent home after identity checks.

Raids took place in numerous other German towns too, and there were at least two arrests, at Wiesbaden, according to witnesses. Religious writings were also seized and in Ingolstadt a revolver was found, police said.

The homes of 64 leading members of the association were searched in the raids, the ministry said.

The aim of Kaplan’s self-styled caliphate is to overthrow the secular Turkish state and replace it with an Islamic state.

“The so-called caliphate incites its supporters against democracy, against those who think differently and against the Republic of Turkey.—AFP