The
magistrate was speaking hours after a gun battle in the eastern town of
Verviers as officials in Paris and Berlin also announced a series of
arrests and interrogations....
...In
Germany, the police arrested two Turkish men suspected of having links
to an organization supporting the militant Islamic State and other
radical groups fighting in Syria.
In a statement, prosecutors in Berlin said they had no indication that the men had immediate plans to stage an attack.
It
was not immediately clear whether the arrests in Berlin were linked to
other investigations in Europe. But the sudden flurry of activity seemed
to reflect heightened alarm after last week’s assaults in Paris, where, on Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry met with Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and then with President François Holland...
...In
Germany, prosecutors said that 250 officers had raided 11 apartments
after months of tracking a group that was said to support the Islamic
State, also known as ISIS
or ISIL, with money and the recruitment of combatants. Both of the
arrested men were Turkish citizens, and they are formally suspected of
planning a serious attack in Syria and of money laundering.
One
of the detained men, identified only as Ismet D., 41, in keeping with
German privacy laws, is suspected of serving as an “emir,” or leader, of
a radical Islamist group that was not identified by name. “He is
suspected of radicalizing this extremist group through ‘Islam lessons’
he held, and encouraging participation in jihad against ‘unbelievers’ in
the war in Syria,” prosecutors said.
The
other man, identified only as Ermin F., 43, is suspected of providing
financial support to members of the group and of helping them prepare
for travel to Syria.
As
the waves of alarm spread, the only Orthodox Jewish school in the
Netherlands was closed on Friday, Reuters reported, even though there
was no specific threat against it.
In Belgium, Jewish schools in Antwerp and Brussels were also closed temporarily, Reuters said....
