Seven suspected supporters of the jihadist militia “Islamic State” (IS) have been arrested in a raid in several German states. According to the federal prosecutor’s office in Karlsruhe, the four women and three men are accused of having supported IS terrorist activities with donations. There have been searches in more than 100 objects in Baden-Wurttemberg, Bremen, Hamburg, North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate as well as in the Netherlands.
More than 1,000 members of the Federal Criminal Police Office, the criminal investigation departments of the affected countries and the police were involved in the raid against a financing network of the terrorist militia IS, as the Federal Prosecutor’s Office further announced. The seven suspects were arrested in Ulm, in Bremen, in the North Rhine-Westphalian districts of Heinsberg and Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis and in the Rhineland-Palatinate district of Neuwied. “By collecting donations and forwarding them to the IS, they played a central role within the financing network,” it said in Karlsruhe.
Two IS supporters in Syria as a switchboard
Since 2020, two IS supporters have been campaigning for money payments from Syria via the online service Telegram, explained the supreme prosecuting authority in Germany. “Integrated into the network were financial intermediaries who collected funds and made accounts or digital donation funds available.” The money collected was transferred to IS members in Syria or to intermediaries named there – a total of at least 65,000 euros.
According to the other information, the payments served to strengthen the terrorist militia. “The funds were used in particular to improve the supply situation for members of the association imprisoned in the northern Syrian camps Al-Hol and Roj,” said the federal prosecutor. In some cases, the funds were also used to enable the inmates to escape or be smuggled out of the camps.
The Al-Hol camp in northern Syria (2021), where relatives of IS fighters are also housed
The supreme prosecuting authority accuses the seven accused – mostly German, but also Kosovan, Moroccan and Turkish nationality – of supporting a terrorist organization abroad. You will now be brought before the investigating judge of the Federal Court of Justice. This decides whether they have to be remanded in custody. The investigators also accuse other people of making money payments to the financing network in favor of the IS.
sti/AR (afp, dpa)
Source: DW
