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Homes raided in northern Germany over suspected links to terrorism

Police and the public prosecutor's office raided 16 locations throughout northern Germany on Wednesday in order to target a suspected criminal organization with terrorist links.

Published: 11 September 2019 13:24 CEST

Homes raided in northern Germany over suspected links to terrorism

A man is arrested in one of the raids of Wednesday morning. Photo: DPA

Police are also investigating the possibility of “terrorist financing,” said Ulrike Stahlmann-Liebelt, senior public prosecutor in Flensburg.

The searches – carried out in the states of Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Schleswig-Holstein – were led by the public prosecutor's office in Flensburg against 11 suspects.

Two men from Syria, aged 34 and 37, were arrested and were to be brought before the magistrate.

The accused 10 men and one woman, the majority of whom come from Syria, are accused of having arranged for illegal financial transactions on an organized basis between December 2018 and July 2019.

They are said to have moved money in the six-figure range money abroad and collected commissions for it, Stahlmann-Liebelt said.

The origin of the money is not yet known and is thought to have flowed into several countries.

According to Stahlmann-Liebelt, larger amounts of cash were found during the searches. She was not yet able to say if the investigators were able to seize anything else.

A house in Hamburg's Eimsbüttel district was searched. A man was taken away by police. According to NDR information, there were also raids in Schleswig-Holstein in Stockelsdorf and in the Flensburg area.

Vocabulary

Raids – (die) Razzien

Suspicion of – Vedacht auf

The accused – (die) Beschuldigte

The magistrate – (der) Haftrichter

Seize – sicherstellen

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Germany arrests Syrian man accused of plotting to kill soldiers

The suspect, an “alleged follower of a radical Islamic ideology”, was arrested on Thursday on charges of planning “a serious act of violence endangering the state”.

The man had acquired two heavy knives “around 40 centimetres (more than one foot) in length” in recent days, prosecutors in Munich said.

He planned to “attack Bundeswehr soldiers” in the city of Hof in northern Bavaria during their lunch break, aiming “to kill as many of them as possible”, prosecutors said.

“The accused wanted to attract attention and create a feeling of insecurity among the population,” they said.

German security services have been on high alert over the threat of Islamist attacks, in particular since the Gaza war erupted on October 7th with the Hamas attacks on Israel.

Police shot dead a man in Munich this month after he opened fire on officers in what was being treated as a suspected “terrorist attack” on the Israeli consulate in Munich.

The shootout fell on the anniversary of the kidnap and killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games by Palestinian militants.

The 18-year-old suspect had previously been investigated by authorities in his home country Austria on suspicion of links to terrorism but the case had been dropped.

The incident capped a string of attacks in Germany, which have stirred a sense of insecurity in Germany and fed a bitter debate of immigration.

Three people were killed last month in a suspected Islamist stabbing at a festival in the western city of Solingen.

READ ALSO: ‘Ban asylum seekers’ – How Germany is reacting to Solingen attack

The suspect in the attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State group, was a Syrian man who had been slated for deportation from Germany.

A federal interior ministry spokesman said if an Islamist motive was confirmed in the latest foiled attack, it would be “further evidence of the high threat posed by Islamist terrorism in Germany, which was recently demonstrated by the serious crimes in Mannheim and the attack in Solingen, but also by acts that were fortunately prevented by the timely intervention of the security authorities”.

The Solingen stabbing followed a knife attack in the city of Mannheim in May, which left a policeman dead, and which had also been linked to Islamism by officials.

Germany has responded to the attacks by taking steps to tighten immigration controls and knife laws.

READ ALSO: Debt, migration and the far-right – the big challenges facing Germany this autumn

The government has announced new checks along all of its borders and promised to speed up deportations of migrants who have no right to stay in Germany.

The number of people considered Islamist extremists in Germany fell slightly from 27,480 in 2022 to 27,200 last year, according to a report from the federal domestic intelligence agency.

But Interior Minister Nancy Faeser warned in August that “the threat posed by Islamist terrorism remains high”.

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