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The federal prosecutor's office has brought charges against five alleged members of a cell of the Islamic State (IS) jihadist militia in North Rhine-Westphalia.
The accused of Tajik origin arrested in raids in March 2019 and April of last year are among other things accused of membership in a foreign terrorist organization, the authority announced on Monday in Karlsruhe.
They are said to have planned attacks and carried out IS propaganda.
According to the investigators' findings, the alleged members were also in contact with high-ranking ISIS representatives in Syria and Afghanistan.
They trained military tactics in so-called paintball games and obtained plans and components for improvised explosive devices and incendiary devices.
They also took on a contract killing in Albania to raise money for ISIS.
However, this failed for a short time.
According to the indictment, a defendant wanted to kill an Islam critic from Neuss who operated a YouTube channel with the pistol and silencer he had already acquired.
He worked with another member of the terrorist cell who had already been indicted in a separate trial and sentenced to seven years in prison by the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court in January.
This man was also supposed to commit the murder in Albania.
Donations for the "Islamic State"
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The two men involved in the alleged contract killing and the plans for the attack on the critic of Islam were arrested in March 2019.
After that, the other alleged members of the terror cell initially realigned their activities, according to the Federal Prosecutor's Office.
They stopped planning their attacks and turned to radicalizing and recruiting new ISIS supporters.
One of the suspects in particular collected donations and handed over around 18,000 euros to the IS via so-called cash couriers and financial agents in Turkey.
According to the indictment, the alleged cell founder had been active as an IS member since 2017.
During this time he operated IS propaganda via a Russian- and Tajik-language online network called IS-Khorasan Province and programmed an app for IS.
This network therefore played a central role in the radicalization of an Islamist assassin in Sweden.
In April 2017, he carried out an attack with a truck in downtown Stockholm.
Four people died in the process.
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According to earlier media reports, the cell should have spied out US military bases in Germany as possible targets for their attacks.
As the authorities announced after the raid in April last year, an attack was not imminent.
The men's intentions were "serious".
According to the indictment, however, the attack on the Islamic critic from Neuss was imminent and was only prevented by the arrest of the first two suspects in March 2019.
In addition, the group had already procured the first components for bomb construction.
The Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court is now responsible for examining the indictment and deciding whether to open a trial.
There is no date yet.