BERLIN—German politicians called for tougher anti-terrorism measures and immigration rules on Thursday after police said they had foiled a plot by Islamist militants to carry out massive bomb attacks.
Leading conservatives demanded new laws to punish those who visit what the authorities say are terrorist training camps, new powers for online monitoring of computers and immigration curbs.
The calls came as security services said they were searching for at least 10 more men involved in what they said was a plot to attack U.S. installations in Germany.
Police on Tuesday arrested three men suspected of planning attacks—two German converts to Islam and a Turk living in Germany.
"Germany must check much more thoroughly to determine who the fanatics and Islamists are," Bavaria's interior minister Guenther Beckstein, a leading conservative, told daily Die Welt.
"Fundamentalists have a much stronger desire to obtain a German passport than normal guest workers," he said, adding that the most dangerous suspects should be banned from having a mobile phone or Internet access.
Beckstein also suggested that police should closely monitor all converts to Islam because they are often more fanatical.
Beckstein and other conservatives have long called for increased surveillance to help them track suspected terrorists, but the proposals have encountered strong resistance.
Germans are sensitive about state surveillance after their experiences with the Nazi Gestapo secret police and former communist East Germany's Stasi.
Crackdown
All three of the arrested men, identified by prosecutors as 28-year olds Fritz G. and Adem Y., and 21-year old Daniel S, had trained at what authorities described as camps for terrorists in Pakistan.
Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble called for new powers to punish people who go to such camps and he received the support of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany.
Politicians also renewed calls for greater powers to monitor computers, saying that "online searches" are essential to targeting and capturing terrorism suspects.
"We also need to be able get evidence via the Internet when a home computer is used to arrange a crime," federal police chief Joerg Ziercke told a news channel.
Germany's top appeals court ruled in February that the clandestine monitoring of computers by police is illegal.
The arrested men had been on the verge of launching attacks after acquiring enough material to make a bomb with explosive power equal to 550 kilograms of TNT.
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