Imams in Germany have informed Turkish authorities of alleged supporters of cleric Fethullah Gulen, according to reports. Germany’s religious leaders have urged authorities to clarify the situation before it’s too late.

A state intelligence body has discovered that imams at one of Germany’s largest Islamic organizations have gathered intelligence at the behest of Turkey’s official religious authorities, the “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger” newspaper reported Tuesday.

The Office for the Protection of the Constitution in North Rhine-Westphalia found that imams at the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB) submitted the names of alleged supporters of exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen to Turkish consulates in Cologne, Düsseldorf and Munich.

At least three lists, including up to 28 names and 11 institutions, had been given to religious attaches at Turkey’s diplomatic missions in Germany, the Cologne-based newspaper reported.

North-Rhine Westphalia’s Interior Ministry confirmed to the newspaper that the names of at least five teachers at state schools had been discovered on the lists. Turkey’s state religious authorities reportedly issued the order to spy on alleged Gulen supporters and gather intelligence on them.

According to local media, at least two preachers had been ordered to return to Turkey in an alleged bid to circumvent prosecution if they were caught spying on Gulen’s supporters.

Ankara has accused Gulen of orchestrating last July’s failed military coup from his base in the US in a bid to oust Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Since then, thousands have been rounded up in a nationwide crackdown on the cleric’s supporters.

In a visit to Mozambique on Tuesday, Erdogan warned that the group blamed for the coup attempt could infiltrate state institutions in other parts of the world where it operates.

ZdK: Clarification needed

Thomas Sternberg, the president of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), urged authorities to clarify the situation in a bid to prevent the Islamic organization from being unwittingly discredited by the reports.

“I can only warn against discrediting the entire DITIB,” he said.

“However, if DITIB does not succeed in becoming independent, to a greater extent than before, then the entire process of dialogue with [religious] associations will need to be reoriented and sorted,” he added.

Turkey’s religious affairs directorate, an official state institution, established DITIB in 1984 in a bid to influence public discourse on religious life for Turks abroad. DITIB funds nearly 900 mosques in Germany.

By Matthew Holehouse, in Brussels

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s personal mobile phone may have been monitored by the US (Reuters)

(The telegraph) British intelligence spied on German leaders as they discussed how to bailout Greece in 2011, newly released cables purport to show.

British officials passed intelligence to the US National Security Agency on proposals by Germany to ask developing nations to help rescue Athens.

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The claim was made by Wikileaks, the anti-secrecy website, in the latest release of US cables from the US spy agency. The website did not give a source for the documents, but it follows the leak of thousands of cables by Edward Snowden, a former contractor who is now living in Russia.

The documents also appear to show that the US was intercepting calls of Angela Merkel and a raft of her senior officials.

Reports two years ago that Merkel’s phone had been targeted by the NSA prompted diplomatic friction between Berlin and Washington, but German prosecutors recently dropped their probe into the case citing lack of concrete evidence.

WikiLeaks said the new, partially-redacted list of 69 phone and fax numbers belonged to senior officials at Germany’s economy and finance ministries, among others.

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Sigmar Gabriel, the economy minister, and Oskar Lafontaine the former finance minister, are on the list. Suddeutsche Zeitung said some of the numbers are still active.

Wikileaks published two documents it claimed were summaries of conversations intercepted – one involving Merkel and a second involving a senior aide – concerning the Greek debt crisis.

A conversation involving Niklaus Meyer-Landrut was intercepted by British intelligence, which passed it to the NSA, according to WikiLeaks. In it, Mr Meyer-Landrut discloses that “the Germans would support a special IMF fund into which the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) nations would pool funds for the purpose of bolstering eurozone bailout activities”.

The revelations about US espionage in Germany provoked outrage in a country still haunted by the memory of mass surveillance by the East German Stasi.

In 2013 Mrs Merkel publicly rebuked President Obama over the affair. “Spying between friends, that’s just not done,” she said.

Germany: Turkish imams spied on teachers at German state schools

British intelligence ‘spied on German Greek plans’ – Wikileaks