Hamburg and terrorism: memory, danger and extremism

Almost 25 years have passed since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, but memorial plaques in Hamburg have only been commemorating the victims for a year. At its inauguration in front of the former US consulate building on the Outer Alster in July 2025, Mayor Peter Tschentscher spoke about the great sympathy shown by the people of Hamburg at the time. The SPD politician added: “The shock and dismay were even greater when it became known that some of the attackers lived in Hamburg, studied here and helped prepare and carry out the attacks.”

Three of the four pilots who died, Mohammed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi as well as Ziad Jarrah, had studied in Hamburg. They came to Germany in the 90s. Atta, Alshehhi and Ramzi Binalshibh, the “banker” of the Hamburg terrorist cell, lived together at Marienstrasse 54. Other members of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network are said to have come and gone there, including Ziad Jarrah.

The Islam working group on campus at the time was a student initiative. “The university management did not carry out the group’s content-related work as the university’s own activity,” explains the spokeswoman.

20th anniversary attack foiled

The danger of Islamist attacks has been apparent again and again in Hamburg in recent years. Shortly before the 20th anniversary of the attacks in the USA, a young German-Moroccan prepared a bomb attack in the Hanseatic city. When he wanted to buy a firearm and a hand grenade on the Darknet, he came across an undercover US investigator. Special forces arrested the 20-year-old a few days before the anniversary, on August 26, 2021. The Higher Regional Court sentenced him to eight years in prison on July 8, 2022. The verdict became final and, according to the Federal Prosecutor's Office, the young man remains in custody.

As the court stated when announcing the verdict, the family environment provided the breeding ground for the Islamist's hatred. His father raised him according to strict religious principles and took him to the Al-Kuds Mosque as a child. Mohammed Atta and his accomplices also met in the building near Hamburg Central Station. According to the court, the convicted man's father was a person in charge of the mosque, which has been closed since 2010. In chats with his son, he approved of violence against “infidels.” The son used the date of the attacks in the USA as his cell phone PIN: 9112001.

In another case, security authorities in Hamburg stopped preparations for a serious terrorist attack in Sweden. A Syrian wanted to kill as many visitors to a Swedish church as possible with an explosive belt. In December 2023, the Higher Regional Court sentenced the then 29-year-old to four years and nine months in prison.

Last May, special forces from the Hamburg police arrested a 17-year-old. According to the public prosecutor's office, the Syrian is said to have planned to kill an unspecified number of "infidels".

The Office for the Protection of the Constitution is monitoring the Islamist scene

The interior authority explains a few days before the 25th anniversary of 9/11 that Germany continues to be in an abstractly high risk situation. However, there are no concrete indications of impending attacks. However, individual perpetrators who radicalized themselves very quickly and who may also have psychological problems remained a challenge for all security authorities. “A focus of the work of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is and remains the observation of the Islamist scene,” said authority spokesman Daniel Schaefer.

There are currently 14 people in Hamburg who are classified as threats in the area of ​​religious ideologies - which means the area of ​​Islamism. Five of them are at large. “Rest assured that the police are focusing on relevant people and that the security authorities in Hamburg are extremely vigilant,” emphasizes Schaefer.

Senator: The greatest danger is right-wing extremism

The Hamburg Senate welcomed both the closure of the Iranian-controlled Islamic Center Hamburg (IZH) in July 2024 and the ban on the Muslim Interaktiv association in November last year. After the closure of the Blue Mosque on the Alster, which was run by the IZH, Tschentscher said: “This day is good for Hamburg’s urban society.” Radical Islamism and anti-Semitism have no place in a cosmopolitan, democratic and free Hanseatic city.

According to the current report by the Hamburg Office for the Protection of the Constitution for 2025, Islamists are by far the largest extremist group in the Hanseatic city. 1,925 people are assigned to this group, 1,610 of them (84 percent) are classified as violence-oriented. For comparison: According to the report, the potential number of right-wing extremists is 450 people, 250 of them (56 percent) are considered violence-oriented. Right-wing extremism is still “the greatest structural threat to our democracy,” said Interior Senator Andy Grote (SPD) when presenting the report in May.