In Germany, native of Dagestan sentenced for plotting terror act

In Berlin, the court found a native of Dagestan guilty of plotting an explosion in a shopping centre and sentenced him to five years and four months of imprisonment.

According to investigators, the defendant arrived in Germany from Dagestan in 2011. He was denied asylum, but was allowed to stay in the country until the end of 2019. The Dagestani native became a supporter of radical Islam and tried to leave for Syria, but was put on the list of the persons who were forbidden to leave Germany.

After that, together with an accomplice, the native of Dagestan made an improvised explosive device (IED). The man planned to commit a terror act in a shopping centre in Berlin in 2015-2016. The police found explosives in the house of the Dagestani native's accomplice, while the man himself was detained already in France, where he managed to escape. He testified against the native of Dagestan, who, in turn, was detained in August 2018.

The investigators suggest that the native of Dagestan and his suspected accomplice visited the same mosque with Tunisian citizen Anis Amri and knew him. All three men were involved in the ranks of the "Islamic State" (IS), a terrorist organization banned in Russia by the court. In December 2016, Anis Amri committed a terror act on the Christmas market in Berlin and killed more than ten people with a truck.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that in January, in Berlin, German special forces fighters detained five natives of Chechnya suspected of plotting a terror act. Later, the detainees were released, since investigators found no grounds for their arrest.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on January 25, 2019 at 12:02 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.