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Seven arrested in Germany for allegedly funding Islamic State terror group

Arrests targeted a network that allegedly used Telegram to send money to Syria via intermediaries.

Seven people suspected of providing financial support to the Islamic State group in Syria have been arrested in Germany, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office announced today.

The seven individuals, four women and three men of German, Kosovan and Moroccan nationality, were apprehended in several regions of western Germany, according to the Prosecutor’s Office. 

Searches were also carried out at 19 properties in Germany and one in the Netherlands.

Those arrested are part of a network operating via the messaging app Telegram, said prosecutors.

“Financial intermediaries were involved in the network, collecting funds and providing accounts or digital donation boxes,” they claimed. “These were then used to transfer the collected funds to IS members in Syria or to intermediaries named by them.”

“The payments served to strengthen IS. The money was used in particular to improve the supply situation of members of the organisation imprisoned in the northern Syrian camps of Al-Hol and Roj.”

In total, at least €65,000 was transferred, prosecutors said. Much of this was used “to improve supplies for people detained”. 

However, they also claimed that “in some cases, the money was used to enable the detainees to escape or smuggle themselves out of the camps.”

Caught up

The camp at Al-Hol has been used for several years to house tens of thousands of people from areas reclaimed from IS by the Syrian Democratic Forces, a coalition of armed groups fighting against both the terror group and Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian government.

Scores of refugees and displaced citizens of Syria and Iraq are in the camp, but it has been used to inter people en masse suspected of being involved in terrorist activity. 

An estimated 11,000 of its 57,000-odd internees are foreign nationals.

According to Médecins Sans Frontières, conditions in the camp are dire thanks to overcrowding and ill-treatment of people, possibly breaching international law.

The suspects arrested by authorities in Europe will now be brought before a judge with a view to possible pre-trial detention.

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