German investigators arrested four men from Tajikistan who were suspected of planning terrorist attacks in the name of the Islamic State (IS) in Germany, the Public Prosecutor General of the Federal Court of Justice announced on Wednesday.
The four men were arrested in Germany’s most populous state North Rhine-Westphalia on Wednesday morning local time.
The four arrested suspects, and a man who had already been in custody since March last year, had intended “to commit lethal attacks in Germany,” according to Prosecutor General.
The suspects had targeted U.S. military facilities in Germany and surveilled a person they deemed critical of Islam with the intention of murder, according to the Prosecutor General.
German authorities believed that the five men had been in contact with two high-ranking IS leaders in Syria and Afghanistan, from whom they received instructions.
The group had already acquired firearms and ammunition to carry out the planned attacks and German authorities found that they had also obtained instructions for the production of so-called improvised explosive devices (IED).
In order to finance their plans as well as the IS in Syria, the suspects had collected money in Germany and transferred the money via financial agents based in a third country, the German authorities noted. Enditem
