| $250 million dollars on security. Breathtaking. |
Police in Germany are braced for a violent dress rehearsal today for next month's G8 summit as 100,000 leftists descend on Hamburg to protest at a meeting of EU and Asian foreign ministers. The Hamburg demo - to be followed by a rally and rock concert on Saturday in the Baltic port of Rostock - are seen as tests of the Left's determination to wreck the summit and the power of the state to stop them. | Those who live in the area think the summit is a catastrophe waiting to happen despite the £100 million in security costs before an officer is deployed. |
This time, police say, the disparate groups protesting against US president George Bush, Prime Minister Tony Blair and others have joined to form disciplined terrorist-like cells which have trained in public parks and used the power of the internet to come together with a single goal: to breach security and bring havoc to the conference.
Germany has one of Europe's most militant anti-globalisation movements - and a recent history of left-wing terrorism. In an attempt to stop them, the tiny seaside resort of Heiligendamm on the Baltic coast has been transformed into Germany's biggest postwar security operation. Since January, workers have been building an enormous barrier that ploughs through the landscape for almost eight miles, nearly 8ft tall, anchored with 4,800 concrete slabs and crowned by four rows of barbed wire. Thick rolls of razor-wire are wrapped around the barbed wire. There will be 16,000 police officers on duty, as well as 1,000 specialist soldiers including snipers and intelligence operatives. Nine surface vessels are already in place in the waters off Heiligendamm to counter any seaborne attempt to disrupt the gathering, while AWACS planes and Tornado jets will seal the airspace above. Draconian measures to prevent open warfare in front of the fence include police interception of mail, bugging phones and spying in cyberspace.
Police also said they had taken odour samples from a handful of left-wingers to help sniffer dogs track them down later if needed - a surveillance method widely used by the Stasi secret police of the former East Germany.
In recent weeks, police have conducted controversial raids on left-wing centres and groups that authorities say have come together in a "disciplined, organised and subversive way" to bring terror to the conference. Petrol bombs have been seized along with plans to distract the police guarding the fence while others storm it. Yesterday the interior minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, admitted the government is worried about the potential bloodshed. Those who live in the area think the summit is a catastrophe waiting to happen despite the £100 million in security costs before an officer is deployed.
Knut Abramowski, the head of the police's "Special Construction Organisation", is in the final phases of planning the total shutdown of Heiligendamm. A special "border" crossing from the outside world to the homes and shops where people live and work has been built and dubbed Checkpoint Charlie. All residents will be issued with special microchip-studded ID cards which will have to be checked at this concrete frontier post for the summit's duration. Airport X-ray machines have been brought in, tents erected for the police to process those allowed to enter and leave legally: one of them contains mountains of dried dog food for the hundreds of police sniffer dogs. Manhole covers have been welded shut, rooftops put out of bounds and some rooms commandeered - for a fee - by police to position sharpshooters.
The advance guard of the summit's opponents has set up shop in a former school among the housing projects of Rostock. The city has provided the rooms. "It's been weeks since we've been able to go anywhere unaccompanied," said Monty Schaedel, the regional co-ordinator of the protest alliance, which comprises about 30 groups including Greenpeace and Christians for Socialism. Ingolf Dinse, the police chief, said: "There is the possibility that undesirables will slip through. But we'll have more police here than you've ever seen."