An anti-terrorist operation carried out jointly on Thursday, July 6, by the German, Dutch and Belgian police led to the arrest of several members of an Islamist group. Seven people aged between 20 and 45 and from Central Asia – a Turkmen national, a Kyrgyz and five Tajiks – were arrested in Germany and two in the Netherlands, a Tajik and a Kyrgyz woman. The Belgian federal prosecutor’s office did not indicate whether arrests had been made after three interventions in Liège and Verviers, in the east of the country.
According to the Kalsruhe public prosecutor’s office, the group based in North Rhine-Westphalia was planning actions “highly visible” in Germany and would have procured weapons but he had not yet established any concrete plans. The seven apprehended suspects arrived in the country from Ukraine, shortly after the start of the Russian offensive, in February 2022. According to authorities, they were raising funds for Islamist networks abroad and were in contact with members of the Islamic State in Khorasan (EI-K), the regional branch of the Islamic State particularly active in Afghanistan.
The couple apprehended in Eindhoven and Breda, the Netherlands, were in contact with these suspects and held a temporary residence permit. According to a spokesperson, the investigation will have to determine if the two people arrested were also to act in Germany or if they were preparing an attack in the Netherlands. In any event, the clues collected seemed “serious enough” to justify the police intervention, said the Dutch public prosecutor.
European intelligence reports resurgence of IS
The operations carried out in the three countries echoed recent analyzes by the European intelligence services on the resurgence of the Islamic State, and particularly of its Afghan subsidiary (EI-K). The Dutch co-ordinator of the fight against terrorism spoke in May of the growing threat posed, according to him, by members of the EI wishing to aim again at targets in Europe. In February, a plot to attack the Dutch consulate in Istanbul was foiled.
In Belgium, the Coordinating Body for Threat Analysis recently noted that ISIS and ISIS propaganda was spreading and quoted the words of a senior American officer who, in March, had spoke in the Senate about ISIS’s ability in Afghanistan to strike at Western interests around the world, “with the ultimate objective of American territory”.
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