After a Cologne court rejected Interior Minister Otto Schily's request to keep Metin Kaplan under house arrest, the self-proclaimed "Caliph of Cologne" has allegedly opened up a new Islamic center in the north of the city. The city's prosecutor told reporters Kaplan had been suspected of reorganizing the now-banned Islamic association "Caliphate State" and is being closely watched by the police. Kaplan, who spent four-years in a Düsseldorf prison on terror charges, was released in May 2003. Attempts to deport him to Turkey have been overruled by German courts because he would face the death penalty. The Caliphate State was founded in 1984 in Cologne and listed about 1,100 members before changes in Germany's laws allowed the organization to be banned. The group is reputed to have connections with the Hammas and other foreign terror organizations.