Deadly shisha bar attack followed targeting of establishments by police and far right, Germany’s Arab community says

‘They used racist stereotypes about migrants, connecting shisha bars to crime, drugs and dirtiness,’ left-wing MP Lorenz Gosta Beutin tells Lemma Shehadi in Berlin

German police officers speak with a Muslim man at the scene of the Hanau attack (AP)

After a eugenicist gunman opened fire on two shisha bars in Germany on 19 February, politicians and activists have linked the attack to a far-right campaign against the traditionally Middle Eastern establishments.

The gunman, who held extremist views that were directly in line with those of the right-wing political party Alternative for Germany (AfD), shot dead nine people of migrant backgrounds, before going on to kill himself and his mother.

In recent years, Germany’s shisha bars have become associated with organised crime groups, often described in the German press as “Arab clans”. The opening scene of the popular television series 4 Blocks, about German-Lebanese gangsters in Berlin, is set in a shisha bar.