Police see over 1,000 militant Islamists in Germany
Be careful traveling in Europe, especially Germany…
(Reuters) - Germany is probably home to more than 1,000 potentially violent Islamists and the number of identified militants has risen constantly in the past few years, the Federal Crime Office (BKA) said on Wednesday.
The number of investigations into Islamic terrorism in Germany, where the 9/11 attacks on the United States were planned, has risen continually since 2001 according to the BKA. A total of 352 investigations were now under way, they said.
“Security officials in Germany believe there are more than 1,000 Islamists ready to commit violence,” the BKA, a nationwide police agency, said in a statement for its autumn congress.
Authorities in the European Union’s most populous state had classified 131 Islamists in Germany as “instigators” of terrorism and held files on a further 274 individuals deemed relevant, the BKA said.
Radical Islam has been under the spotlight in Germany again over the past few weeks since security officials said a plot to stage attacks in Europe had been disrupted thanks to information from a suspected German militant captured in Afghanistan.