(MENAFN- Gulf Times) Three alleged Syrian jihadists went on trial in Germany yesterday accused of plotting co-ordinated suicide bombings and shootings in the western city of Duesseldorf. The three defendants, identified as per German practice only as Saleh A and Mahood B, both 25, and 27-year-old Hamza C, were in the dock accused of belonging to the Islamic State group and planning the attacks in the Duesseldorf old town centre in 2015.
The accused 'are believed to have plotted to have two suicide bombers set off explosive vests and then open fire on passers-by with automatic rifles, the Duesseldorf court said in a statement.
The case came to light when Saleh A went to a police station in Paris in February last year and told officers that he had 'a certain amount of information about a sleeper cell that was ready to strike in Germany.
He had been registered as an asylum seeker in the Duesseldorf region in 2013 and Germany requested extradition from France after he turned himself in.
German authorities believe Saleh A and Hamza C joined IS in early 2014 in Syria. They crossed from Syria to Turkey in May 2014. From there they travelled separately in March and July in 2015 via Greece to Germany.
Prosecutors said the pair planned to finance the attack by selling a video to the Vatican with proof of life of a priest kidnapped by IS in Syria.
Germany has endured a string of attacks claimed by IS including a rampage by a Tunisian asylum seeker who slammed a truck into a crowd of people last December at a packed Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people. The Duesseldorf trial is scheduled to last at least until December.
Five people have been arrested and an arms cache found after overnight terror raids in France and Belgium linked to a bikers' club called the Kamikaze Riders, officials and sources said yesterday.
A series of searches in the gritty Anderlecht district of Brussels netted four people and arms hidden in a garage, the Belgian federal prosecutor's office said.
Meanwhile, in northern France, a joint Franco-Belgian operation picked up a man on suspicion of having links to the Kamikaze Riders, a group implicated in terror offences in Belgium.
The raids and arrests come with Belgium and France still on high alert after several deadly attacks claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group, with troops on patrol in Brussels and Paris to guard key buildings and infrastructure. Only last month, a soldier shot dead a man who had attempted to set off a bomb in Central Station, right in the heart of the Belgian capital, sparking fears that further incidents might be in the offing.
Investigators said at the time they had evidence that the suspect, a 36-year-old Moroccan national, had IS sympathies.
They also found explosive materials in a raid on his home in Molenbeek, a Brussels district where many of the jihadis who carried out the deadly Paris attacks in November 2015 and those in the Belgian capital in March 2016, grew up and found shelter.
In a statement on the latest raids, the Belgian federal prosecutors' office said 'various weapons were found during one of the house searches and that four people had been 'arrested and taken in for questioning.
A source close to the probe said investigators had found at least two Kalashnikov assault rifles, while reports spoke of explosives also being discovered during operations in the immigrant-heavy Anderlecht district.
A prosecutors' spokesman said separately the raids were 'directly linked to members of the Kamikaze Riders, not to the investigation into the Paris and Brussels attacks.
The prosecutor's statement said the raids were 'completely independent from that probe.
In France, a source who asked not to be named, said a 42-year-old arrested in a suburb of the northern city of Lille was suspected of plotting a 'violent action.
Several members of the Kamikaze Riders, formed in 2003 and known for testing the patience of the police, were suspected of links to foiled attacks in Brussels in late 2015.
In October 2016, two members of the group were convicted of belonging to a terrorist group, one jailed for six years, the other for three. They were suspected of plotting an attack similar to the November 2015 carnage in Paris that left 130 people dead.
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