German police carry out nationwide anti-terror raids

Police forces in five German states carried out raids on Tuesday morning with the aim of tackling the financing of terror groups, police in Thuringia have reported.

Police investigators in Thuringia, Hamburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Saxony and Bavaria carried out the raids.

Police officials in Thuringia confirmed to the Süddeutsche Zeitung that the raids were “anti-terror in the broadest sense”.

A total of 12 apartments and a communal accommodation were searched, but no arrests were made.
The raids carried out due to a suspicion that suspects were planning a serious act of violence against the state, but investigators say there was no concrete evidence of an imminent attack.

The investigations are focused on a 28-year-old Russian citizen from the region of Chechnya who allegedly intended to join the terror organization Isis in Syria.

A further ten men and three women, all of whom are Russian citizens from Chechnya, are suspected of financing terror organizations. All the suspects are asylum seekers whose status in Germany has not yet been resolved.

Police are set to release more details on the raids later on Tuesday.
Germany has so far been spared large-scale jihadist attacks.

But Europe’s biggest economic power has been shaken by two assaults claimed by the Isis and carried out by asylum seekers – an axe rampage on a train in Würzburg that injured five, and a suicide bombing in Ansbach in which 15 people were hurt.

Police said this month they had foiled an alleged plot by a Syrian refugee to bomb one of Berlin’s airports.

The cases have fuelled anxiety over Germany’s record influx of nearly 900,000 asylum seekers in 2015.