Germany's neo-Nazi terror front

Police with assault rifles stand behind a barricade, casting a suspicious eye over passersby. Visitors are asked to open their bags and walk through a metal detector. There is more security at the synagogue on Oranienburger Strasse in the heart of the German capital than at many airports.

Some 65 years ago, this house of worship was in flames as Nazis rampaged against Jews in the pogrom known as Kristallnacht. In many cities, synagogues were destroyed and to this day have not been rebuilt.

Now, there is fear of a new escalation of right-wing violence and possibly the emergence of organized right-wing terrorism.

For the past week, police have been unraveling plans by a neo-Nazi group in Munich to carry out a series of bomb attacks. Police say they uncovered specific plans by the group to set off a bomb on Nov 9, the anniversary of Kristallnacht, at the cornerstone-laying ceremony of a new synagogue in central Munich. The bombing was to be just the first of an undisclosed number of attacks, investigators said.

The latest arrest in the case - of a 17-year-old girl on suspicion of belonging to a terrorist organization - took place Tuesday, but wasn't announced until yesterday. Police have made a total of 11 arrests in the case since late last week. Two of those detained have since been released. The rest remain in police custody.

For years, right-wing violence in Germany has been increasing.German investigators insist that there is no evidence that a new generation of brownshirts is organizing armed resistance along the lines of Germany's last domestic terror group - the leftist Red Army Faction (RAF). But that view might be changing.

"This group has the structure of a 'Brown Army Faction,' " Bavarian interior minister Günter Beckstein told reporters.

The evidence: For the first time, neo-Nazis appeared to network nationally to carry out a terrorist act. They were found with hand grenades and 30 pounds of explosives, police said. They carried out surveillance on German politicians, as the RAF in the 1970s did, and police found a "hit list" with names of politicians who might be targeted for an attack. Racially motivated targets on the list included several Munich mosques, a Greek school, and an unspecified Italian target, Beckstein said.

The politically motivated RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, carried out a wave of terror over the course of two decades, kidnapping and killing German business leaders and politicians and also attacking US military sites in then West Germany. They had close ties to Palestinian terrorists and to the East German secret police. In the early '90s, their members largely dead or in jail, the group gave up the fight.

While there are some parallels to the RAF, analysts say the right wing extremists lack some key qualities and characteristics of a terrorist organization.

One German counterterrorism official, who asked not to be named, said there is still no evidence that the splintered extreme right is capable of pulling together to follow a common goal and strategy. There is also no evidence that they acquired skills that were old hat to the RAF: falsifying passports, robbing banks, and working with complex electronics to detonate explosives.

"The RAF was simply a group of people with a much more sophisticated intellectual background," the official says.

Bernd Wagner, who runs a program called "Exit-Germany" for youth who want to leave right-wing groups or Skinhead gangs, also dismisses a direct comparison to the RAF. But he warns against underestimating the danger that such a movement could emerge.

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