IS chief recruiter in Germany: Abu Walaa sentenced to ten and a half years in prison

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

IS chief recruiter in Germany
Abu Walaa sentenced to ten and a half years in prison

The Higher Regional Court of Celle declares the Iraqi Abu Walaa guilty of supporting and membership in the terrorist organization Islamic State and sentenced the 37-year-old to a long prison term.

The higher regional court in Celle has sentenced the alleged head of the terrorist militia Islamic State (IS) in Germany to ten and a half years in prison. The court found Abu Walaa, a 37-year-old Iraqi man, guilty of support and membership in the terrorist organization. The judges are convinced that the hate preacher and his network radicalized young people, especially in the Ruhr area and Lower Saxony, and sent them to the IS battle areas. Three co-defendants received prison terms of between four and eight years.

Abu Walaa was the imam of the mosque of the now forbidden association "Deutschsprachiger Islamkreis Hildesheim". A German Serb who was also accused and who received eight years' imprisonment is said to have used his apartment in Dortmund as a prayer center and also temporarily housed the Islamist Anis Amri there. Amri committed an attack on a Christmas market in Berlin in 2016, in which twelve people died.

In the course of the trial, the court dealt with a long line of other Islamists who are said to have been radicalized by the Dortmund resident and a co-accused man from Duisburg in the back room of his travel agency. The man from Duisburg was sentenced to six and a half years in prison. Two of the recruits are said to have committed suicide bombings in Iraq with numerous fatalities. The federal prosecutor's office had demanded eleven and a half years imprisonment for Abu Walaa and between four and a half and ten years for the other defendants. The defense, on the other hand, had pleaded for acquittal or significantly milder sentences.

The activities of the group around Abu Walaa did not go unnoticed by the security authorities. "Murat" was a regular in Dortmund, an undercover agent from the State Criminal Police Office in North Rhine-Westphalia, who also followed Amri's heels. The federal prosecutor's office also relied on information from this undercover agent, who did not receive any permission to testify in the process. Her key witness was a young man from Gelsenkirchen, who came into Islamist circles as a teenager, but then turned away from IS and worked with the authorities.

The defense, however, questioned the credibility of this key witness. She accused the undercover agent of inciting attacks herself. The defense held that the prosecution's allegations were largely undetectable.