revistaieee7

Alberto Caballero Díez
European foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq:...
ANALYSIS BY COUNTRY
Germany
Out of the 720 foreign fighters that travelled to Syria, last reports indicate that 85
of them have died, 230 have returned to Germany and at least 90 are still active in
the extremist scene posing therefore a domestic threat. 42 This leaves a total of 405 who
are supposedly still abroad. Assuming that the proportion of jihadists who return and
those that continue operating in Germany remains similar during the rest of the Syrian
conflict, it is reasonable to expect that at least 40% of the future returnees could
pose a threat and thus try to perpetrate an attack in the homeland. These returnees
could also try to recruit potential jihadists, something certainly not difficult because
of the significant spread of salafism in the country: the number of salafist supporters
is around 7,500 and there are some 50 salafist-controlled mosques. 43 It is worth to
stress that the nucleus of German foreign fighters in Daesh belonged to the Millatu
Ibrahim salafist organization before travelling to Syria. The group, which was founded
in a mosque of Solingen (North Rhine-Westphalia) and had around 50 members, was
banned in 2012 for its involvement in riots protesting the publication of Mohammed
caricatures. 44 Despite Millatu Ibrahim moved to Denmark, some of its members have
remained in Germany and created another group called ‘Tauhid Germany’, which was
also banned last March. None of the groups have reportedly tried to recruit returnees,
but German intelligence agencies do well to track them since they may constitute a
bridge between returnees and other salafists.
Most of the Germans that travelled to Syria joined Daesh and nearly 70% of a
total of 249 foreign fighters studied by the authorities had committed crimes such as
violent acts and offenses against property before they left the country. 45 German fighters
have an average age of 26.5 years old, they are mainly from states such as North
Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse or Berlin and about 80-85 % are from Muslim immigrant
families. 46 So far, only 30 returnees have been arrested and just two have been convict-
42 HEINKE, Daniel. ICSR Insight: German foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq, International Centre for the
Study of Radicalization, 2015.
43 STEINBERG, Guido W. German Jihad: On the Internationalization of Islamist Terrorism, 2013.
44 HEINKE, Daniel. ICSR Insight: German foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq. International Centre
for the Study of Radicalization, 2015.
45 Ibid.
46 THE MEIR AMIT INTELLIGENCE AND TERRORISM INFORMATION CENTER. Foreign
fighters from Western countries in the ranks of the rebel organizations affiliated with Al-Qaeda
and the global jihad in Syria, 2014, p. 55.
http://revista.ieee.es/index.php/ieee
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