Islamists, neo-Nazi terrorists ‘nationwide problems’ in Germany – intel official
RT.com
9 Feb, 2017
Radical Islamist cells are spreading all across eastern German states while terrorism-related tip-offs emerge on daily, says the head of Thuringia’s domestic intelligence agency, adding that the right extremist underground is becoming “a nationwide problem.”
Islamist extremists were advancing “with impunity” in rural areas of eastern Germany even before the ongoing influx of refugees into the country, Stephan Kramer, head of Thuringia’s regional Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) told Mitteldeutsche Zeitung, as cited by Die Welt.
Nowadays, the security environment in the east has deteriorated even more, Kramer maintains.
“We are getting tip-offs leading to terrorist suspects every day,” he said, adding however that it is equally crucial to distinguish between actual suspects and false alarms.
He then mentioned Jaber al-Bakr, a Syrian refugee who was detained in October last year on suspicion of plotting to bomb an airport in Berlin. When police raided his flat in the eastern town of Chemnitz, some 1.5kg of home-made explosives, like those used in the fatal jihadist attacks in Paris in November 2015 and in Brussels last March, were found.
“We have similar cases here in Thuringia, and I know from other colleagues in the eastern German states that it is the same there,”Kramer said without elaborating. The intelligence officer did not name any specific Islamist groups, only stressing that “this is a nationwide problem.”
In a separate interview to Frankfurter Runschau, Kramer said the far-right extremists pose an equal threat to public safety.
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