A Muslim hate preacher was given 18,000 EUR in government grants to support his misrepresented business activities during the coronavirus pandemic.
Salafist Ahmad Armih, 46, who is being monitored by German security officials as an Al Qaeda supporter is categorised as a threat to the state and has been receiving benefits.
According to prosecutors in Berlin, he and his wife managed to take advantage of the current crisis by pretending to run a beekeeping business asking for it to be subsidised by the investment bank of the state of Berlin (Investitionsbank Berlin – IBB).
The bank decided to support him like many other local businesses, and a short while after the application 18,000 EUR (15,600 GBP) was transferred to his account, as it was to many other small businesses in the capital city.
Martin Steltner, spokesman for the Berlin Attorney General, said: “The 46-year-old accused, Ahmad A., is suspected of having used the situation of the coronavirus crisis together with his partner to surreptitiously obtain a total of 18,000 EUR in subsidies from the investment bank by misrepresenting the scope of a commercial activity, while both also received social benefits.”
He did not say what the commercial activities were that the hate preacher was alleging to be carrying out, but German newspaper Bild reported that he had told them he was a beekeeper.
Police who raided the man’s apartment in the city’s Sprengelstrasse found money in his apartment, and also seized a number of brand-new household appliances that he had purchased.
He was a preacher until mid-2018 in a mosque on Torfstrasse where he spoke under the alias Ahmad Abul Baraa. He is one of the few Salafist preachers in Germany that has a strong influence not only at the local level, but also on the national level.
In his speeches, he reportedly divided the world into good Muslims and bad non-believers. Local media reported he had described the struggle of groups close to the terrorist organisation Al Qaeda as “blessed jihad”. He also “prayed” that God “kill the enemies of Allah individually”.
He repeatedly urged his reportedly mostly young listeners to stay away from “non-believers” and to treat “people who fight Islam” with “enmity and hatred”.
According to a study by the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, around half of the visitors to his mosque are categorised as extremists
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