Hans Rustad Hver måned reiser fem radikaliserte muslimer fra Tyskland til Waziristan for terrortrening. De siste ti årene har 220 fullført terrortrening og halvparten har vendt tilbake til Tyskland, mener tysk etterrretning. Når vil de omsette sin opplæring i praksis?
«In the last few years, the threat level in Germany from al-Qaida has actually increased,» says German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich, a member of the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU).
Surge in Volunteers
Never before have as many volunteers from Germany attended terrorist training camps as in the last two years. According to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, 138 people from Germany planned to travel to a training camp in 2009 alone. Since then, five volunteers leave the country on average each month to go to one of the camps in Pakistan. In the last decade, at least 220 people from Germany have completed terrorist training, with about half returning to Germany.
German authorities now know a lot about what happens in places like Mir Ali and Miram Shah, two centers of the jihad movement in Pakistan’s tribal areas. They know, for example, that the emir of one training camp pays his recruits only a few rupees a day, which is not even enough to buy a piece of meat.
They have heard that activists with an organization called the «German Taliban Mujahideen» and German members of al-Qaida meet and talk while shopping around noon at the market in Mir Ali. The men from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, on the other hand, are unpopular, because they supposedly behave like occupiers.
They are also familiar with derisive comments that al-Qaida fighters have made about Mounir Chouka, who lives in Bonn and has made so many propaganda videos that investigators have trouble keeping up. Within such circles, the man is regarded as a coward, because he routinely disappears before the first shots are fired.
Det er Spiegel som skriver dette. Radikaliseringen av landets egne muslimer og forbindelsen til treningsleire i Pakistan er ikke ny, Spiegel har skrevet om det flere ganger. Likevel velger Aftenposten å slå opp intervju med en statsviter som hevder at terrortrusselen i Europa har gått ned, og at den har økt i land som Jemen. Det er ren desinformasjon.
