The North Rhine-Westphalian security authorities currently monitor 190 Islamist dangerous persons and 178 so-called relevant persons of this group.
This was reported by North Rhine-Westphalia’s Minister of the Interior Herbert Reul on Thursday in the Committee on the Internal Affairs of the Düsseldorf State Parliament on the suspected planned attack on a synagogue in Hagen. Since 2019 (221), the number of dangerous persons has slightly decreased. The number of anti-Semitic crimes in North Rhine-Westphalia has already been decreasing since 2018, Reul said.
According to Burkhard Freier, head of the North Rhine-Westphalian Office for the Protection of the Constitution, there are currently 110 people in Syria and Iraq who have left Germany and could potentially return and need to be monitored.
A 16-year-old Syrian is said to have prepared an attack on a synagogue in Hagen last week and is in custody because of it. According to investigators, the youth had been in contact with a person via mobile phone and had been given information on how to build a bomb, among other things, Reul told the MPs. When he was arrested on September 16, the 16-year-old said that he did not want to commit an attack, but “only wanted to see how to build a bomb”.
In the Islamist movement, “mentors” tried to find out on the internet which young people were posting pictures of terror and executions, reported Freie. “Then you know you can seduce them further. You can send them instructions on how to build bombs.”
According to Reul, the planned attack was to hit a synagogue that was as crowded as possible. “Since the Yom Kippur festival was imminent, it was obvious to anticipate a planned attack on this high Jewish religious holiday. Whether the attack was really to take place during this festival – the holiest and most solemn day of the Jewish year – is not yet entirely certain,” said Reul.
https://www.juedische-allgemeine.de/politik/reul-anschlag-sollte-volle-synagoge-treffen/