The 29-year-old, previously convicted Islamist, is said to have been planning to carry out an attack weeks ago. Before the situation in the Middle East escalated, he was said to have targeted police officers.
The 29-year-old from Duisburg, known as “Osama, the German” and convicted as an IS terrorist, is said to have been noticed with terrorist intentions weeks ago. “We had vague indications that he intended to carry out an attack on a police station,” security sources said.
There wasn’t enough evidence to make an arrest, but there was a “dangerous person” addressed. Because the 29-year-old fell into “old patterns” after losing his job in June, he was under very close observation.
The 29-year-old’s defense attorney, Mutlu Günal, said that the allegedly intended attack on police officers was mentioned in the arrest warrant, but that it was “mere insinuations and assumptions that are completely irrelevant in criminal proceedings.”
Target: Pro-Israel demonstrations?
A district judge issued an arrest warrant against the 29-year-old on Wednesday and sent him into custody because he is said to have declared his willingness to carry out an Islamist attack with a chat partner in Syria. As a possible target of the attack, he is said to have found out about pro-Israel demonstrations on the Internet.
Around 50 police officers were involved in storming the apartment and arresting the 29-year-old on Tuesday evening. If charged and convicted, the convicted Islamist could face 3 to 15 years in prison for attempting to commit murder.
Investigations against convicted perpetrators are ongoing
Meanwhile, the investigations, especially the evaluation of the data carriers confiscated from him, are continuing. “I don’t assume that this arrest warrant will last long,” lawyer Günal said on Wednesday. A spokesman for the investigating Düsseldorf public prosecutor’s office did not want to comment on this.
The German, who comes from Bielefeld, had to serve the entire five-year prison sentence that the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court sentenced him to in April 2017 and was not released on probation after two thirds of it. After his release in 2021, he even had to wear an ankle bracelet for a while, security sources said.
In the meantime he wanted to leave for the Netherlands, but the Dutch wouldn’t let him into the country. After taking part in an exit program, he appeared to have reformed, but this was a snapshot.
The perpetrator was already known
The 29-year-old appeared in propaganda videos years ago as the martial IS fighter “Osama al-Almani” (Osama, the German). A particularly macabre video showed him mocking the corpse of a decapitated man in Syria and feeling its pulse (“What’s wrong with him?”).
As an IS terrorist, he was sentenced to five years in juvenile detention by the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court. He is said to have become radicalized in the Herford Salafist scene in 2012. From September 2013 to spring 2016 he fled to Syria and joined armed IS units there.
After his return he was arrested at Frankfurt airport. It could not be established during the trial that he had actually taken part in fights, which was what the prosecution had assumed at the time.
Source: Stern
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