The Federal Prosecutor’s Office has arrested a suspected supporter of the Islamic State (IS) jihadist militia in the Rhineland-Palatinate community of Römerberg. At the same time as the arrest that took place on Monday, three other suspects were arrested in Switzerland by the Swiss federal prosecutor’s office and the youth prosecutor’s office in Winterthur, the German investigators announced on Tuesday in Karlsruhe.
Aleem N., who was arrested in Rhineland-Palatinate, is accused of preparing a serious act of violence that is dangerous to the state and of being a member of a terrorist organization abroad. N. is said to have essentially translated IS texts, videos and audio files from Arabic into German and then distributed them in German-speaking countries. The IS considers such activities to be equivalent to participation in combat operations.
According to the Karlsruhe investigators, N. has long been a supporter of jihadist and radical Islamic ideas. He left Germany in mid-September 2020 to go to Syria. He received military training from IS there and then wanted to take part in combat operations or terrorist attacks. But it didn’t come to that; At the end of October 2020 he returned to Germany.
From April 2021, N. had then started propaganda work for the IS. In the late autumn of 2021, he had undergone a telephone interview with IS officials in order to verify his reliability. Afterwards, N. had wanted to travel to IS areas again, but an attempt to do so in January of this year had also failed. On Tuesday, N. was to be brought before the investigating judge of the Federal Supreme Court to decide on the enforcement of his pre-trial detention.