German police raided premises of the banned al-Aqsa charity across the country on Friday night, after a German court upheld a ban on the group, the German Interior Ministry said on Saturday. Police searched 34 premises in the capital, Berlin, the north-western city of Bremen and the western states of Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia, and seized a large quantity of material, the ministry said in a statement.
It said the operation, which also targeted two other groups believed to be connected with the al-Aqsa charity, ended on Saturday morning and the material seized was being examined. A court in Leipzig on Friday rejected an appeal by the al-Aqsa group against a ban imposed in 2002 for supporting violence in the Middle East.
German authorities then had accused the group of having links to the Islamic group Hamas and of offering financial support to the families of suicide bombers. The group was not believed to be connected to the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, which linked to the main Palestinian group, Fatah.