Former German Jihadist Warns ISIS Planning Europe-Wide Terror Attacks

Harry S, 27-year-old former German ISIS militant – who was trained to become a part of a special unit, a kind of suicide squad for house-to-house combat – but fled the terror group after witnessing beheadings and executions for three months in Syria, has told authorities that Islamic State is planning coordinated terror attacks across Europe – “something that happens everywhere at the same time”.

Der Spiegel reports:

Harry S says that on several occasions, IS members tried to recruit volunteers for terrorist attacks in Germany. In the spring, just after he first arrived in Syria, he says that he and another Islamist from Bremen were asked if they could imagine perpetrating attacks in Germany. Later, when he was staying not far from Raqqa, the self-proclaimed Islamic State capital city, masked men drove up in a jeep. They too asked him if he was interested in bringing the jihad to his homeland. Harry S says he told them that he wasn’t prepared to do so.

Harry was radicalized after meeting German Salafist René Marc Sepac in a prison where he was serving a two-year sentence for robbing a supermarket of €23,500 in early 2010. Upon his release, he visited the Furqan Mosque and became part of a Salafist clique that sent at least 16 adults and 11 children to Syria in 2014. However, he was arrested, returned to Bremen by Turkish authorities, had his passport confiscated and was ordered to check in at a police station twice a week.

But in the spring of 2015, he managed to sneak into Syria – where he met Austrian Islamist Mohamed Mahmoud and former Berlin rapper Denis Cuspert (aka Deso Dogg) for the first time – on someone else’s passport. He told Der Spiegel:

Cuspert was more important to Islamic State as the “hero” of propaganda videos used to attract Western recruits than as a fighter. Mahmoud had more influence and would hold ideology training sessions on Fridays in Raqqa.

Harry appeared in a propaganda video filmed shortly after ISIS seized the city of Palmyra in May. Wearing camouflage, he carried the ISIS flag across the screen before German-speaking militants called on supporters across the world to kill “infidels” and shot two captives (reportedly the Syrian government soldiers) dead. The video, entitled “The lions of the Caliphate: A message signed in blood to Angela Merkel”, featured Mahmoud who Harry described as one of the most disturbed people he had ever met.

Is #ISIS planning to launch much larger genocidal chemical weapons attacks soon, possibly in US, Europe or Mideast? https://t.co/4yoBt6943l

— Joel C. Rosenberg (@JoelCRosenberg) March 15, 2016

However, his lawyer, Udo Würtz, says his client did not directly take part in any atrocities, calling him a “lackey who allowed himself to be misled by the propaganda of ISIS and who misled himself”.

In November, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told Bild am Sonntag that some 200 former militants who used to fight in the ranks of ISIS and other terrorist groups have managed to return back home, raising the threat of potential terror attacks to a new high.

In December, head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maassen warned that around 1,100 radical Islam supporters in Germany were potentially ready to conduct attacks; at least 430 of those Islamists were so dangerous that “a serious crime can be expected from them at any moment”.

Europol chief warns 5,000 ISIS terrorists may be in Europe https://t.co/JRNMPRDuuY #EU #France #UK #Germany #Sweden #Denmark #Belgium

— Michi (@mj123451) February 20, 2016

German daily Die Welt reported last month that more than 800 Islamists have left Germany to join ISIS in the Middle East. A recent German Federal Criminal Police Office study on 677 Islamists has revealed that a majority of those who left for Iraq and Syria were males between 22 and 25 years of age and one-sixth were Muslim converts.

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