'Islamist mole' who worked for German intelligence released
July 12, 2017
A regional court in Düsseldorf has said it will only pursue some of the charges raised against the intelligence worker. The suspect was arrested last year on suspicion of sharing secret information on Islamist web sites.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
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The former employee at Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, will only face charges for disclosing sensitive information, a speaker for the regional court in Düsseldorf said on Wednesday.
It means that the court had decided to drop more severe charges brought forth by the prosecution against the suspect, which in turn nullified his arrest warrant.
The attempted bomb attack at the Bonn train station in 2012 led to one of the highest-profile terror trials in Germany. Here's a look at some other major trials involving Islamist extremists in Germany.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/B. Marks
Failed Bonn bomb
The blue bag left on the platform at Bonn's central station in 2012 contained explosives that did not go off, but a city-wide manhunt unfolded. Marco G. was eventually arrested and charged with planting the bomb. Three others are charged with plotting to assassinate a politician from the far-right PRO-NRW party. Their group allegedly drew inspration from an Islamist movement in Uzbekistan.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Frankfurt airport bus attack
In March 2011, Arid Uka shot dead two US servicemen waiting for a bus at Frankfurt airport prior to deployment in Afghanistan. "This is indeed the first Islamic-motivated terror strike to have happened in Germany," the judge said, adding Uka had sought revenge for military operations in Afghanistan. Uka, born in Kosovo, acted alone and was sentenced to life in prison in February 2012.
Image: AP
The Sauerland Cell
The "Sauerland Cell" was a German cell of the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), a terrorist group on the Pakistani-Afghan border. The four German and Turkish men had planned large-scale bomb attacks against American targets in Germany from their base in the western region of the Sauerland. Arrested in September 2007, they were sentenced in March 2010 for up to 12 years.
Image: AP
Sharia Police
Sven Lau, a Salafist Muslim, was the man behind a well-known Islamist publicity stunt. In 2014, Lau led several men around the city of Wuppertal in orange security vests labeled "Sharia police." Acting as state authorities, they warned people visiting local clubs and bars to adhere to Sharia, or Islamic law. He is currently on trial for backing a terror group fighting in Syria.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Bildfunk/M. Becker
Big mouth
Nils D., a Salafist from Dinslaken, joined the "Islamic State" in Syria in October 2013. He tracked down the group's deserters - armed with explosives and guns. He returned to Germany a year later, and boastful statements about his time in Syria eventually got him arrested. He confessed the names of other German Islamic extremists and was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in jail.
Image: DW/M. Gopalakrishnan
"Biggest mistake of my life"
On the final day of Harry S.'s July 2016 trial, he said "going to Syria was the biggest mistake of my life." The Bremen-born Muslim convert spent three months with "Islamic State" in Syria in 2015. He wanted out after civilians were murdered for a short recruitment film he helped make. He was sentenced to three years in jail for being part of a foreign terrorist organization.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/B. Marks
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'Radicalized role'
The suspect started working at the BfV in April last year as part of a new task force employed to monitor Germany's every-growing Islamist scene.
Instead, however, the suspect was allegedly tasked by German terror cells of gathering details on planned police raids and passing the information on to Islamist cells based in Germany.
According to the prosecution, he had been in contact in November 2016 with Junud al-Sham, a terror group made up of namely Chechen and Lebanese Islamists, shortly before being arrested.
German media reported back in November that the suspect was also planning to carry out an attack on his place of work, although the BfV were quick to debunk the reports. The court's decision on Wednesday appeared to suggest that there was little or no evidence of such an attack in the works.
The defendant's lawyers told German weekly "Der Spiegel" that the court's decision to release the suspect from custody was in large part thanks to the impression he made during his hearing.
