By David Hutzler, dpa I Tuesday, March 19, 2024
THURINGIA – Two suspected Islamist terrorists in the German state of Thuringia have been arrested for allegedly planning an attack with firearms near the Swedish parliament, a spokeswoman for the German prosecutors’ office said on Tuesday.
The two Afghan nationals were detained near the city of Gera, 85 kilometres east of the state capital Erfurt.
The spokeswoman said the pair were alleged to have received instructions from an offshoot of the Islamic State terrorist group last year called the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), based in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The attack was intended to be a reaction to the Koran burnings taking place in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries at the time, prosecutors alleged, adding that police officers were among those set to be targeted.
The duo are alleged to have researched a possible attack on the internet and made several attempts to procure weapons, which were unsuccessful.
“The two detainees had already made concrete preparations for a bloody attack,” Germany’s Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann said, adding that the case shows that the country is well equipped to defend itself against terrorist threats.
There are, he said, sufficient possibilities and means to take action against “the enemies of our freedom.”
The head of the Thuringian Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Stephan Kramer, told dpa that “the Islamist threat is still at a high level – including here in Thuringia.”
His office had been involved in the case for a long time and had played a key role in the investigation. He did not want to say exactly how the two men came to be the focus of the authorities’ attention.
The ISPK has been waging an armed conflict with the militant Islamist Taliban in Afghanistan for several years.
Recently, there have been repeated arrests in Germany in connection with the ISPK. The group was linked to possible plot to attack the Cologne Cathedral around the turn of the year.
One of the arrested suspects is alleged to have joined the ISKP as a member in August, while the other is accused of supporting the organization.
Both had previously collected donations for Islamic State in Germany totalling around €2,000 ($2,170) and sent the money to the terrorist group via intermediaries, investigators believe.
The men are to be brought before a investigating judge at Germany’s Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe on Tuesday and Wednesday. The arrest warrants, which were issued almost two years ago, are to be opened there.
A decision will also be made on whether to remand them in custody. Specifically, the investigators are accusing the two of membership of or support for a terrorist organization abroad, conspiracy to commit a crime, in this case murder, and offences against the Foreign Trade and Payments Act.
The announcement of the arrests came from Germany’s federal prosecutors’ office in Karlsruhe, which acts on the government’s behalf.
