Arresting and detaining these dangerous people can make sense, at least until a final decision is reached on their deportation. However, such detention must always be subject to time limits and court review.
And now when we hear that Iran and Iraq plan to cooperate more closely and that a fundamentalist is coming to power in Tehran - a man about whom we cannot be sure that he is absolutely averse to terrorism - it is very worrisome.
This will help us next year with the World Cup. I can imagine a lot of visitors from abroad will be here and asking what happened between 1933 and 1945. A lot of that will come up. I think this will make an important contribution to those discussions.
After Madrid, we intensified our investigative efforts once again, and we are in the process of bringing about expansions in security laws and creating an index file system.
On September 11 last year international terrorism entered a new dimension.
It's a mistake to assume that Islamists always come from the slums. Indeed, many come from affluent families but for some reason just couldn't manage to integrate into Western society, even though they had good opportunities for advancement.
The terrorists who committed the 2003 Istanbul attacks were locals, that is, Turks. And when filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered in the Netherlands last year, the murderer and his supporters were also part of the Muslim community.
The attacks on the Paris Metro in the 1990s were committed by members of the local Muslim community, immigrants from the Maghreb region of North Africa.
We can no longer apply the classic criteria to clearly determine whether and when we should use military force. We are waging war in Afghanistan, for example, but it's an asymmetrical war where the enemies are criminals instead of soldiers.
Nevertheless, I do know that we are part of a danger zone, we have military operations in Afghanistan and we're training the Iraqi police force. The terrorists also have us in their sights.
Incidentally, our railroad facilities are under video surveillance by the federal police. However, the federal and state governments will have to determine whether video surveillance shouldn't be significantly expanded to a certain degree.
