Published November 19,2021
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A police report has shown that a failed
Islamophobic attack was carried out to set fire to the
Cologne Central Mosque, the headquarter of the
Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB).
According to information released by the
Cologne police, a probe was opened into the
arson attack on the mosque located in the
Ehrenfeld district, and an unidentified cyclist has been being sought.
The private security officers, who awaked to the
Islamophobic incident that took place at around 04:00 in the morning, tried to talk to the suspect, but the man escaped from the complex by leaving half a tin of
combustible material and a few lighters behind him, the official sources said in a statement.
The background of the
anti-Muslim incident is still unclear, the police examined the evidence at the scene, evaluated the security camera footage and obtained information from the witnesses to shed light on the
hate crime incident.
Cologne's most prominent mosque, which is run by Turkish-Muslim umbrella organization DITIB, received numerous threat letters in recent years from right-wing extremists and neo-Nazi groups.
A country of over 82 million people, Germany has the second-largest Muslim population in Western Europe after France. Among the country's nearly 5 million Muslims, 3 million are of Turkish origin.
