German police on Tuesday arrested three Syrian men accused of being members of the Islamic State (IS) militant group, prosecutors said.
Advertisement
More than 200 police commandos took part in the pre-dawn raids in northern Germany to detain the men, who were suspected of either plotting an attack or awaiting orders to commit one.
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said they had been under observation for months and there were no indications of any concrete plans for an attack.
The three are accused of coming to Germany in mid-November at the behest of IS “in order either to carry out an assignment they had already received or to keep themselves ready for further instructions”, federal prosecutors said.
Authorities say they are doing everything possible to monitor “the potential terrorists” and pointed out that there have been more investigations and arrests this year.
They were given passports provided by ISIS and received thousands of U.S. dollars as well as mobile phones.
In October, he and the two other suspects, Mohamed A. and Ibrahim M., signed up with an Islamic State official responsible for operations and attacks outside Islamic State territory and traveled to Europe, the prosecutors said.
Paris attackers killed 130 people and wounded 368 others, in coordinated armed attack in Paris on November 13, 2015. He is suspected of receiving training there, including the handling of weapons and explosives.
In July, Germany suffered two bloody attacks claimed by IS, which were carried out by migrants.
Advertisement
German authorities have urged the public not to confuse migrants and “terrorists”, but have acknowledged that more militants may have entered the country among the one million asylum seekers who arrived past year. ISIS has sought to capitalize on refugee routes into Europe to conduct attacks on the continent, as shown by both the Paris and Brussels attacks, where several of the attackers had returned to their home countries from Syria or Turkey.
