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Prosecutor says men raised funds for group tied to
Iraqi attacks
17. Juni 2005 F.A.Z. Weekly. German authorities
launched a new investigative assault this week
against people suspected of belonging to the terror
group Ansar al Islam (Helper of Islam).
Police acting under the direction of Federal
Prosecutor Kay Nehm arrested three Iraqis who are
suspected of contributing money or raising funds for
the organization. ”The money was used to finance
terror attacks in Iraq by the Ansar al Islam group,
and to secure the logistical and structural
foundation of the group,” Nehm said.
But Nehm's office said it had found no evidence that
the group was planning terrorist attacks in Germany.
The three suspects were identified as Dieman A.I.,
39, of Nuremberg; Kawa H., 33, of Munich; and Najat
O., 43 of Brühl, a city in Baden-Württemberg. Najat
O. is also suspected of transferring money to Iraq
last year. Police are also investigating 11 other
people suspected of helping the terror organization.
The arrests grew out of an investigation into a
suspected plot in December to assassinate Ayad
Allawi, the prime minister of Iraq at the time,
during his visit to Berlin. At the time, police
arrested three Iraqi natives, and Nehm said he was
certain that the quick action had thwarted an
assassination attempt.
On Tuesday, police said that one of the men arrested
in the suspected plot - Ata R. of Stuttgart - had
directed the fund-raising activities.
The arrests on Tuesday were the latest in a series
that stretches back to the December investigation.
In January, 700 police officers carried out raids in
several cities that resulted in the arrest of 22
people suspected of belonging to an Islamic network
that recruited people to join a holy war.
These raids were launched as a result of information
that U.S. interrogators obtained from a prisoner at
Guantanamo Bay, the New York Times reported
afterward. And later in the month, police arrested
two people in Mainz suspected of being connected to
the al Qaida terrorist organization.
Germany's domestic intelligence service, the Office
for the Protection of the Constitution, estimates
that the number of members of Islamic organizations
in Germany grew last year from 30,950 to 31,800 - an
increase of 2.7 percent.
German officials consider Ansar al Islam to be a
foreign terrorist group. The group was founded in
2001 in northern Iraq by radical Islamic Kurds. The
group wants to establish an Islamic state of
Kurdistan based on the Taliban government in
Afghanistan.
It has been linked to attacks in Iraq against U.S.
forces and relief organizations, including the U.N.
headquarters in Baghdad in 2003. Bavarian officials
estimate that the group has about 100 members in
Germany.
www.faz.net
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