Sinan Selen | |
---|---|
Vice President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution | |
Assumed office 21 January 2019 | |
President | Thomas Haldenwang |
Chancellor | Angela Merkel Olaf Scholz |
Personal details | |
Born | 1972 (age 51–52) Istanbul,Turkey |
Citizenship | Germany |
Education | University of Cologne |
Occupation | Jurist |
Sinan Selen (born 1972,Istanbul) is a German jurist and the Vice-President of the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). Selen is the first high-ranking officer with a migrant background in the German intelligence services. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Selen was born in Istanbul to secular parents. At the age of four,he and his parents moved to Cologne,where his parents were journalists at the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle. [5] In high school he wrote for the students' journal. [5] He was also involved as a paramedic [6] with the St. John ambulance service. [5] He studied European law at the University of Cologne. [7]
In 2000 Selen began his career at the Federal Criminal Police Office [1] where he was assigned to the security detail of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder [5] [6] and Minister of the Interior Otto Schily. [5] After the terrorist attacks on the twin towers in New York on 11 September 2001 he searched for traces of evidence that the attackers left in Germany. [5] [6] In July 2006 he organized the hunt for two Lebanese terrorists who placed two bombs on regional trains at the Cologne main station. [4] The attack failed as the bombs did not explode. [4] After an extensive review of videos from surveillance cameras,one of the perpetrators was captured in the train station in Kiel. [4] Afterwards,his accomplice in Lebanon surrendered as well. [4]
Selen entered the Ministry of the Interior in 2006,and initially his work was focused on the ban of the Salafist organization Millatu Ibrahim. [6] He served as the head of the international counter-terrorism department until 2009. [7] Between 2009 and 2012 he was assigned to the Headquarters of the Federal Police in the counter-piracy and human trafficking department. [7] From 2012 onwards he worked in the Ministry of the Interior where [7] in early 2016 he was given the task to coordinate between Turkey and Germany on terror-related issues. [4] As a result,he and the diplomat Emily Haber often travelled to Ankara,Turkey. [5] In their conversations with the Turkish authorities,he refused to extradite members of the Gülen movement,and conversed through a translator in the German language most of the time. [5]
From 2016 Selen was in charge of security for the travel agency TUI. [4] In January 2019 he assumed the role of Vice President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), [7] succeeding Thomas Haldenwang who was appointed president of the BfV. [4]
Selen's appointment to the vice-presidency of the BfV caused concerns across the political spectrum. The left was worried that he would cause difficulties for Kurdish sympathizers of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and left-wing Turkish political activists, [5] while the right accused him of being a Muslim,which he actually is not. [5] The Greens welcomed his appointment. [6]
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