Police officers from the Federal Criminal Police Office and the State Criminal Police Office of North Rhine-Westphalia arrested seven men suspected of planning an Islamist terrorist attack in Germany in the early hours of the morning. This was announced by the Attorney General.
The arrests were made in various locations in North Rhine-Westphalia, while two other people were also arrested in the Netherlands, as reported by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. According to the attorney general, the defendants are five Tajik nationals, a Turkmen and a Kyrgyz. They are said to have entered Germany from Ukraine shortly after the war of Russian aggression began in spring 2022. In late June 2022, according to the federal attorney general’s indictment, they formed a terrorist organization to “carry out attacks high-profile in the spirit of IS» in Germany. A man arrested today in Holland also belonged to the association.
According to the federal attorney general, the group was in contact with members of the IS regional branch ‘Islamic State of Khorasan Province’ (ISPK) abroad. To implement their plan, the defendants had already considered attack targets in Germany. According to the information, the suspects would have explored possible crime scenes and tried to obtain weapons. According to the Attorney General, there was no concrete plan of attack. According to the investigators, six of the defendants have been collecting money for IS for over a year to transfer it abroad. The defendants will be brought before the investigating judge between today and tomorrow.