Terror suspect arrested in Wolfsburg

The German attorney general's office confirmed on Thursday evening that the authorities had taken a 26-year-old man into custody in the northern city of Wolfsburg. He stands accused of having joined the "Islamic State," which has seized large swathes of territory in Syria and northern Iraq over the past year. Joining a foreign terrorist organization is a criminal offense under German law.

The attorney general's office also confirmed that the Wolfsburg home of the dual German-Tunisian national had been searched.

According to the attorney general, the suspect spent several months of last year in Syria and is suspected of having received "combat training for military jihad." However, there was no evidence that the suspect had concrete plans for a specific attack or that he was in preparation for one.

According to a report published in the Friday edition of the mass-circulation "Bild" newspaper, the police arrested the man as he was leaving his house.

The suspect is to appear before a judge at the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe on Friday. The judge is then to decide whether the man should be held in investigative custody.

Pforzheim flats searched

Meanwhile, police in the southern German town of Pforzheim searched a number of apartments belonging to suspected Islamists. The Karlsruhe prosecutors' office confirmed an earlier report in the newspaper "Stuttgarter Nachrichten," which said targets of the raids were suspected of preparing a significant subversive attack. A spokesperson said that evidence was confiscated during the searches but declined to provide further details. It was not immediately clear, whether any arrests had been made.

This follows last week's terrorist attacks in France that killed 17 people and comes just days after German police arrested a 24-year-old terror suspect in the western city of Dinslaken.

pfd/rc (dpa, AFP)