A liberal, women-led Berlin mosque known as a haven for gay Muslims was a target for an Islamic State terror cell in Germany, prosecutors say as the group goes to court.
A group of seven immigrants arrested in 2023 across Germany and the Netherlands will soon see their day in court, and German prosecutors allege before their incarceration the men prepared to build bombs and researched targets including a liberal mosque, Jewish citizens, and a fair.
The men, who originated in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan came to Germany from Ukraine as part of the refugee flow that immediately followed the Russian invasion in 2022. One of the group is alleged to have led an Islamic State terrorist cell in Kyiv, Ukraine, and some of the group are said to have already killed in Ukraine, including by beating. Members of the group have allegedly had contact with Islamic State figures elsewhere in the world who launched successful terror attacks, or who were arrested while in the planning phase.
Now the German prosecutor claims this group of seven discussed the liberal Ibn-Rushd-Goethe Mosque in Berlin as a target in July 2022. They are also alleged to have monitored Jews to learn their daily routines. Die Welt, a German broadsheet which claims to have seen the prosecutor’s court documents, notes the group had experimented with building a suitcase bomb, some had received military training from the Islamic State, and that members of the group were already under unfulfilled deportation orders.
Despite the claims, it appears that no concrete plans for an attack were in place at the time of the arrests and these allegations are yet to be tested in court.
The Ibn-Rushd-Goethe Mosque in Berlin reportedly targeted by the group was founded by Seyran Ates, a Muslim woman who has lived under 24-hour police protection for ten years, such is the threat to her life from fundamentalist Islam. The mosque is known for being one of the few where men and women can worship together, and where homosexuals are also welcomed.
German Humanist nonprofit HPD notes the mosque has come under increased threat of late since it was described as a “place of devil worship” by Islamic State propaganda.