German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said here Friday that anti-globalization extremists plotting to disrupt June's Group of Eight (G8) summit could be taken into preventive custody before the meeting.

"Regional police authorities are considering taking recourse to so-called preventive detention," Schaeuble told German newspaper, Bild.

Potential troublemakers could be detained for up to two weeks if it could be proved that they were planning criminal actions, he said.

Under German laws, troublemakers can be detained for 14 days if they are firmly proved to be planning a crime. The government had threatened to resort to the measure with hooligans during the football World Cup last summer.

Germany has tightened security measures as the G8 summit is less than a month away.

Schaeuble had already made the announcement of re-imposing border checks to stop anti-globalization protestors from entering Germany before the country host the G8 summit on June 6-8 in the Baltic Sea resort of Heiligendamm.

The host is reportedly expecting as many as 100,000 protestors to target the G8 summit, planning to deploy 16,000 police in Heiligendamm and the nearby city of Rostock.

It has built a 12-km-long security fence around the venue, where leaders from Germany, Canada, the United States, Japan, Britain France, Italy and Russia will meet.

On Wednesday, police cracked down left-wing extremists suspected to plot disrupting the summit.

They searched 40 premises in six northern states, including Berlin and Hamburg, for suspects thought to belong to a far-left group preparing arson attacks and other violent protests against the summit.

Source: Xinhua