BONN, February 20 (IslamOnline.net) - German authorities have announced new restrictions on a Saudi-funded school and mosque in Bonn upon claims that they are linked to extremist groups.

The King Fahd Academy, funded by the Saudi monarch, has denied any links with extremists. Opened in 1995, it comprises a school catering for 500 students and a Mosque which can accommodate 700 worshippers.

Of the new restrictions are a ban on permanent residents in Germany to attend the school and limit access to the mosque to the academy’s members, the Central Council for Muslims in Germany (ZMD) said Thursday, February 19, on its website.

The Cologne government also stripped the Academy’s staffers of the power to pick up students applying for lessons there.

Now, the Bonn education administration officials would take up the selection process, the ZMD said.

The number also witnessed shrinking, with only ten students allowed to roll in, a small number, compared with the Academy’s 500 students joining its school in earlier years.

Under education laws in North Rhine Westphalia, the state where Bonn is located, children must have had only a permission to attend the academy instead of a public school.

The school has also 470 pupils enrolled, just under 200 of whom are German nationals, last year.

No seminars, social evenings or ceremonies after work hours would be held under the new restrictions, taken four months after German officials backed down from a threat to close down the academy.

The restrictive measures were announced as the head of the Parliament’s interior and security affairs commission, Corneilie Sonntag Wolgast, said that the academy would be still under close scrutiny.

Juergen Roters, the head of the Cologne-based regional authority overseeing the school, told Deutsche Welle that all employees in the school would be carefully watched.

Rotors had previously indicated that his administration wanted to close the academy because of its alleged fundamentalist activities.

Roters said the measures included ensuring German language tuition, restriction of Islamic and any other activities on or off the campus that might encourage extremists.

The Academy officials condemned the measures, saying they are based on false accusations launched in press campaigns targeting the Saudi-funded institution.

German press outlets pointed accusing fingers at the academy in order to have it closed down and stopping it serving Arab and Islamic community members in the country, said Mohamed Abdel-Wahab, the head of the academy.

The academy combines education in Arabic, French and German, and Islam with a concerted effort to build bridges with German society by increasing understanding of Arab and Islamic culture.

It also organizes debates between German academicians and Muslims in an effort to better improve the widely-misunderstood image of Islam.

Abdel-Wahab dismissed allegations of connections to acts of terrorism and helping “extremist Muslims”.

Press reports have claimed that the academy had dismissed a teacher believed to have given a speech calling for a Jihad, or Holy struggle in October last year.

A report has it that German television reporters infiltrated its classrooms and videotaped a teacher inciting a holy war “in the name of Allah” and advocating martial-arts training-including the use of crossbows-for young students.

Channel 2 had earlier claimed that Al-Qaeda members are linked with Islamic leaders in Bonn. The broadcaster stopped short of giving evidence to the accusations.