German police ban Dresden rallies Monday citing terror threat

 German police banned public open-air gatherings in the eastern city of Dresden Monday, citing a terrorist threat against a planned rally by the anti-Islamic PEGIDA movement, AFP reports.

Dresden police had received information from federal and state counterparts indicating a "concrete threat" against the "Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident" group.

There had been calls for would-be "assassins to mingle among the protesters... and to murder an individual member of the organising team of the PEGIDA demonstrations", police said in a notice on the 24-hour ban.

This was consistent with "an Arabic-language Tweet that called the PEGIDA demonstrations an enemy of Islam", it said.

"Against this background and given the characteristics of terrorist attacks, we must assume the use of homicidal means and an immediate threat to life and limb of all participants of the demonstrations."

Because there were no individual suspects, Dresden police said it saw now alternative to the temporary suspension of the constitutional right to free assembly within city limits.