Nine suspected terrorist plotters were arrested in Germany and the Netherlands on Thursday accused of planning an ISIS-inspired attack.
The suspects come from former Soviet republics in Central Asia and some arrived in Germany from Ukraine after the outbreak of war, prosecutors said.
Dutch police said one suspect, a 29-year-old from Tajikistan, was apparently “given the order to plot a terrorist attack”. His Kyrgyz wife, 31, was also arrested.
German authorities said some suspects were in contact with ISIS-Khorasan Province, an affiliate of the terrorist group, and had transferred money to the militants.
The seven arrested in Germany “share a radical Islamic ideology” and formed a terrorist group “with the objective to commit headline-grabbing terrorist attacks in the spirit of ISIS”, prosecutors said.
“For the purpose of executing their plan, the suspects had already contemplated targets in Germany, scouted potential crime scenes and attempted to procure weapons.”
