GERMAN POLICE ARRESTS FOUR ISIS TERRORISTS PLOTTING TO ATTACK US BASES
German law enforcement officers arrested four Islamic State
sympathizers who were plotting to attack U.S. installations and personnel in
the country.
The four men came from Tajikistan. Identified only by their
first names and the first letter of their surname (Azizjon B., Muhammadali G.,
Farhodshoh K., and Sunatullokh K.), they age between 24- and 32-years-old.
A fifth individual, identified as a Ravsan B. by the German
publication Der Spiegel, who belonged to the same terrorist cell had been
arrested last year for illegal possession of firearms. He appears to have been
the leader of the terrorist cell as well as its main financer.
Tactical units from the German police conducted simultaneous
dawn raids in six locations in the cities of Essen, Neuss, Siegen, and
Heinsberg in which they arrested the four men.
Besides plotting to attack U.S. installations, the five
terrorists were tracking people who they saw as critics of Islam and compiling
an assassination target deck.
There are approximately 40,000 American troops stationed in
Germany. The majority are dispersed in five major installations (Bavaria,
Stuttgart, Rheinland-Pfalz, Wiesbaden, and Ansbach).
German prosecutors are charging the five men for being
members of a terrorist organization.
Despite being dealt with a success of significant blows in
the past year, the Islamic State remains a dangerous enemy mainly because of
its appeal to small cells of fanatics who are dispersed around the world. Delta
Force might have taken out Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the terrorist organization’s
former leader, in a daring operation back in October but there are thousands of
ISIS fighters and their families at large or captured in makeshift detention
camps.
And some of them have returned or have been returned to
their countries of origin after they were captured in the battlefields of Iraq
and Syria. Most European countries are trying them for joining and fighting for
ISIS. But there are some who claim that returned fighters should be
reintegrated into society after they have undergone a deradicalization program.
In Germany, in the event that prosecutors can’t tie a
returned fighter to a specific crime, they are set free but put in a
surveillance list and monitored by the German police and intelligence services.
Such an approach can prevent large-scale attacks that require lengthy and
careful preparation but can’t do little in the case one of the returned
fighters decides to go on a killing spree in his neighborhood, a tactic that
has been on the rise in the United Kingdom and France.
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