BERLIN: German police Tuesday arrested three men with forged Syrian passports accused of being Daesh militants and labeled a possible “sleeper cell” with links to the Paris attackers.
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.
The men were identified only as Mahir Al-H., 17, Ibrahim M., 18, and Mohamed A., 26, in a statement issued by federal prosecutors.
They left Syria last October and traveled via Turkey and Greece — a route used by tens of thousands of refugees and migrants — and arrived in Germany in mid-November.
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the three apparently used the same migrant trafficking network as several of the Daesh gunmen who killed 130 people in Paris in November last year.
“According to what we know so far, the investigation of the (federal criminal office) BKA points to links to the attackers of Paris from November 2015,” de Maiziere told a press conference.
“There is every reason to believe that the same trafficking group used by the Paris attackers also brought the three men who were arrested to Germany,” he said, adding that their forged travel documents came from “the same workshop.”
He said German police had monitored the men for months and tapped their phones, meaning that at no stage was there a risk of an attack.
Prosecutors said in their statement that Mahir Al-H. had joined Daesh in its de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria by September 2015 and received some weapons and explosives training.
The following month, all three men had pledged to travel to Europe in talks with an Daesh fighter who was “in charge of missions and attacks” outside of the Syria-Iraq region where the group has its self-proclaimed caliphate.
In Europe, “the three accused were meant to either execute a mission or await further instructions,” the prosecution service said in the statement, adding that no evidence of “concrete orders or instructions” had been found.
The men had received mobile phones and four-figure cash sums in US dollars, as well as the fake passports, from Daesh, the statement said.
They were detained at three refugee shelters in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein by more than 200 commandos of the federal police, BKA and police forces of several states.
Police also raided several other asylum seeker shelters, Die Welt daily said.
Warrants for their arrest had been issued by a federal judge on September 7, based in part on intelligence provided by Germany’s domestic security agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
In July, Germany suffered two bloody attacks claimed by Daesh, which were carried out by migrants.
Germany arrests 3 Daesh suspects with ‘links’ to Paris attackers
Germany arrests 3 Daesh suspects with ‘links’ to Paris attackers
Kosovo, Serbia ‘need to normalize’ relations
- Kosovo, which hopes to join NATO, has also been cultivating relations with Washington in recent months, by removing tariffs on American products
PRISTINA: Kosovo and Serbia need to “normalize” their relations, Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti said, several days before legislative elections where he is seeking to extend his term with more solid backing.
Kurti has been in office since 2021 and previous accords signed with Serbia — which does not recognize the independence of its former province — have yet to be respected.
“We need to normalize relations with Serbia,” said Kurti. “But normalizing relations with a neighboring authoritarian regime that doesn’t recognize you, that also doesn’t admit to the crimes committed during the war, is quite difficult,” he added.
Tensions between the two neighbors are regularly high.
“We do have a normalization agreement,” Kurti said, referring to the agreement signed under the auspices of the EU in 2023.
“We must implement it, which implies mutual recognition between the countries, at least de facto recognition.”
But to resume dialogue, Serbia “must hand over Milan Radoicic,” a Serb accused of plotting an attack in northern Kosovo in 2023, Kurti asserted, hoping that “the EU, France, and Germany will put pressure” on Belgrade to do so.
Kosovo, which hopes to join NATO, has also been cultivating relations with Washington in recent months, by removing tariffs on American products and agreeing to accept up to 50 migrants from third countries extradited by the US. So far, only one has arrived.
“We are not asking for any financial assistance in return,” Kurti emphasized. “We are doing this to help the US, which is a partner, an ally, a friend,” added the prime minister, who did not rule out making similar agreements with European countries.
Unable to secure enough seats in the February 2025 parliamentary elections, Kurti was forced to call early elections on Sunday, after 10 months of political deadlock during which the divided parliament failed to form a coalition.
“We need a decisive victory. In February, we won 42.3 percent, and this time we want to exceed 50 percent,” he said.
