German police arrest 5 suspected Daesh recruiters
German police have arrested five people accused of working as recruiters for the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in the country.
A statement from the prosecutors' office said on Tuesday that the five formed a network led by a 32-year-old Iraqi national, identified as Ahmad Abdulaziz Abdullah A.
Their main objective, the statement said, was to send people to operate within the ranks of Daesh in Syria.
The five were arrested in the northern state of Lower Saxony and the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, local media said. The others in the group were identified as Turkish national Hasan C., German-Serb Boban S., German national Mahmoud O. and Cameroonian Ahmed F. Y.
The prosecutors said the group had managed to send at least one young man and his family to Syria.
German Interior Minister, Thomas De Maiziere said the "national security authorities were successful today in the fight against a suspected network, which allegedly recruited members in Germany for" Daesh.
The minister also stated that the "success against this network is good news and shows that the security authorities, in this case especially the security authorities of the states, are active, alert and determined."
In May, German intelligence services said that of a total of 820 nationals who had left Germany for Syria and Iraq to join Daesh and other terror groups, one-third had returned and 140 were killed abroad. An estimated 420 German militants remain in the two Arab countries.
European governments have for years feared that the return of their nationals could pose serious security threats, as it has been the case in countries such as France and Belgium.
Germany has been spared acts of terror claimed by Daesh such as the 2015 attacks in Paris, but the Takfiri group has claimed two assaults carried out by refugees in the country: an axe rampage on a train in Wuerzburg that injured five people, and a bomb attack in Ansbach in which 15 people were injured.
Last month, German police said security forces had foiled an alleged plot by a Syrian refugee to carry out a bomb attack at one of the airports in the capital Berlin.
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