Germany has said that three Syrian men apprehended on Tuesday had links to last November's Islamic State attacks in Paris and were smuggled into Europe posing as asylum seekers.
The three, aged 17, 18 and 26, and named only as Mahir al-H, Ibrahim M, and Mohamed A, were arrested in six pre-dawn raids in the states of Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein. They had travelled into Germany through Turkey and Greece on fake passports and were also in possession of several thousand dollars in cash and mobile phones with a pre-installed communications application.
Announcing the raids, German investigators said they believed the three had been trafficked into the country by the same organisation that supported the Paris attackers last November. The three men in Germany had entered the country, prosecutors said, with a view to “carrying out a previously determined order” from Islamic State, also known as Isis, “or to await further instructions”.
Federal interior minister Thomas de Maizière said the three men were likely to have formed a so-called “sleeper cell”, remaining dormant and undercover until activated by superiors.
“Everything points to the fact that the same smuggler organisation behind the Paris attacks also brought into Germany the three who were arrested,” he said.
While the 17 year-old man in the group had weapons and explosives training in the Isis stronghold of Raqqa, Mr de Maizière said no concrete attack plans had yet emerged.
However, he said the security situation remained “serious, unchanged” with a real threat from extremist groups being “remote controlled” from abroad.
Germany’s federal criminal police said they had received 415 tip-offs involving refugees and terrorism so far in 2016. Just 63 led to further investigation.
Amid ongoing tensions in Germany over its refugees, Chancellor Angela Merkel has promised “firm solutions” to address refugee integration into German society.
But the chancellor stood by her refugee strategy, saying that “whoever has to take . . . political decisions must do so even if they polarise”.
She said that growing resentment and violence towards new arrivals reminded her of the atmosphere in Germany towards Balkan refugees in the 1990s.
“There is a potential for resentment, even for hate against foreigners,” she said. “The job of politics is to counter this.”
After accepting more than one million asylum seekers last year, the German leader has shrugged off demands from her Bavarian political allies to impose a cap this year.
