German police arrest five in raid on 'IS network'

[Valin]

BBC:

Nov. 8 2016

 

Five people linked to the so-called Islamic State (IS) group have been arrested in co-ordinated raids in Germany, including a senior Islamist figure, reports say.

 

Flats were raided in northern and western Germany and a mosque was searched near Hanover.

 

Among those arrested was an Iraqi who goes by the alias Abu Walaa, or "the preacher without a face".

 

Germany's NDR TV has identified him as Ahmad Abdelazziz A.

 

The raids came as a result of information from a 22-year-old jihadist who spent several months with IS in Syria before fleeing to Turkey, it said.

 

Before returning to Germany in late September, the man, named Anil O, gave an interview in which he referred to Abu Walaa as "IS's number one in Germany".

 

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[Valin]

Police raid 200 suspected Daesh sites in Germany
Reuters | Published — Tuesday 15 November 2016

BERLIN: German police on Tuesday carried out sweeping raids on mosques, apartments and offices across 10 states in a probe against a group suspected of propagating hate and inciting 140 youths to fight alongside Daesh militants in Syria and Iraq, the interior ministry said.

The group called The True Religion (Die wahre Religion) is now also banned, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said. “Across the country, jihadist Islamists came together in this group named The True Religion,” he said. “Under the pretext of promoting Islam, under the pretext of supposedly harmless distribution of translated versions of the Qur'an that took place in pedestrian zones, hate messages were propagated and young people radicalized,” added the interior minister.

De Maiziere noted that after participating in the Qur'an distribution campaign organized by the group, “140 young people traveled to Syria and Iraq where they joined the fight with terrorist groups.” The raids, which targeted around 200 homes and sites in 10 states including North Rhine-Westphalia in the west, Hamburg in the north and Baden-Wuerttemberg in the southwest, began at dawn. Tuesday’s ban is the biggest such prohibition in Germany targeting radicals after another organization called “The Caliphate State” was outlawed in 2001.

 

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