German police arrest 7 allegedly planning Islamic State-inspired terror attack
Suspects are citizens of Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan; prosecutors say group did not have ‘tangible terrorist plot’
BERLIN — German police on Thursday arrested seven men for allegedly planning a terrorist attack in the country inspired by the Islamic State (IS) group.
The men from central Asia had “known each other for some time and share a radical Islamic ideology,” the federal prosecutor’s office (GBA) said in a statement.
Shortly after the war in Ukraine broke out in early 2022, “they travelled from there to Germany almost at the same time,” prosecutors said.
The seven, along with another suspect arrested in the Netherlands, formed a cell in June 2022 “with the objective to commit headline-grabbing terrorist attacks in the spirit of IS.”
“The suspects had already contemplated targets in Germany, scouted potential crime scenes and attempted to procure weapons” before they were stopped, prosecutors said.
But the group did not have a “tangible terrorist plot,” they added.
The men, including five citizens of Turkmenistan, one from Tajikistan and another from Kyrgyzstan, were arrested by police at various locations in the western German region of North Rhine-Westphalia.
With the exception of the Kyrgyz suspect, prosecutors accused the men of “collecting funds for IS since April 2022” to be sent to the organization abroad.
A further suspect from Tajikistan and his Kyrgyz wife were arrested by authorities in the Netherlands.
The two were accused of “committing preparatory acts for terrorism offenses,” Dutch prosecutors said. In addition, the man was “also suspected of membership of the terrorist organization Islamic State.”
“Our security forces remain firmly focused on tackling Islamic terrorism,” German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in a statement, describing the threat as “acute.”
