Police officers search a residential building opposite the German-Speaking Islamic Circle Hildesheim mosque in Hildesheim, Germany. Photo: AP
BERLIN — German authorities on Tuesday arrested five men who allegedly aided the Islamic State group in Germany by recruiting members and providing financial and logistical help.
The federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement that the men were arrested on suspicion of supporting a terrorist organization. The arrests were made in a series of raids in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the northern state of Lower Saxony.
The country’s justice minister, Heiko Maas, called the arrests “an important blow to the extremist scene in Germany.”
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said it was critical to prevent people from becoming “so radicalized that they are in danger of becoming terrorists.”
“We don’t want terrorism to take place in Germany,” he said. “We don’t want terrorism to be exported from Germany.”
One of the raids was in the Lower Saxony city of Hildesheim, which is a known center for ultraconservative Muslims known as Salafists and where a mosque was raided during the summer.
The prosecutor’s office, which handles all terrorism cases, said the suspects weren’t known to have links to IS suspect Jaber Albakr, who killed himself in prison in October two days after being arrested on suspicion of plotting to attack a Berlin airport with homemade explosives.
Modal TriggerPolice officers outside a residential building opposite the German-Speaking Islamic Circle Hildesheim mosque in Hildesheim, Germany.Photo: AP
The five men arrested Tuesday are suspected of recruiting young Muslims in Germany, and raising funds to send them to Syria to join IS, prosecutors said. They’re also accused of providing logistical support for the trips.
One of the suspects, a 32-year-old Iraqi citizen identified as Ahmad Abdulaziz Abdullah A., who also goes by the alias of Abu Walaa, is accused of being the ringleader of the group. He openly supported the IS group, attended several extremist events as a speaker and approved the departure of those willing to go to Syria, prosecutors said.
Modal TriggerGerman security authorities arrested five men Tuesday on allegations they aided the Islamic State group in Germany.Photo: AP
His last name wasn’t provided in line with German privacy laws.
Two other suspects, identified as 50-year-old Turkish citizen Hasan C. and 36-year-old German-Serbian citizen Boban S., were allegedly in charge of teaching Arabic and “radical Islamic content” to recruits.
A 27-year-old German citizen, Mahmoud O., and a 26-year-old from Cameroon, identified as Ahmed F.Y., are suspected of helping to organize the recruits’ departure to Syria.
“The network verifiably trafficked one young man and his family to the ‘IS’ in Syria,” the statement says.
The suspects will be brought before a judge later on Tuesday and on Wednesday, the prosecutor’s office said.
Also on Tuesday, a higher regional court in Frankfurt sentenced a 30-year-old German citizen to 8½ years in prison for membership in the Islamic State group and war crimes. The court said the man, who was identified only as Abdelkarim E., fought with IS in Syria in 2013 and 2014 and participated in disfiguring the body of a Syrian soldier. He recorded footage of the combat operations and also of how the dead man’s ears and nose were cut off, the court heard.
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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