22 Jailed in Germany After Raids on Islamic Network
German police arrested 22 people Wednesday during nationwide raids on a network of Islamic extremists that turned up militant propaganda and forged passports, investigators said.
Authorities said the roundup at mosques and homes in five German states included supporters of Ansar al Islam, a group with links to Al Qaeda and Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi, who is fighting U.S.-led forces in Iraq.
Police arrested 11 people on warrants and detained 11 others in a coordinated crackdown on a network that raised money, produced fake passports and recruited people for jihad, Munich prosecutors said.
“Some of these are people we classified as top security risks,” but there was no evidence that they had planned imminent attacks, Bavaria’s Interior Minister Guenther Beckstein said in a telephone interview.
The suspects, ages 17 to 46, include German citizens and nationals of Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya and Bulgaria, police said.
Beckstein said the raids in Frankfurt, Berlin and several other cities were aimed at disrupting the radicals’ logistical support in Germany.
The searches capped a long-running investigation of 20 people alleged to have raised money for radical Islamic causes through illegal means, Munich prosecutors said.
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