Islamic State: Germany Struggles to Deal with Returning Fighters

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http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-faces-challenges-in-putting-islamic-state-radicals-on-trial-a-991744.html



Hundreds of radical Islamists from Germany have headed to Syria and Iraq to fight for Islamic State. Many have since returned home. Now the country's court system is gearing up for the coming legal battles -- and facing myriad challenges.

Islamic State: Germany Struggles to Deal with Returning Fighters
By SPIEGEL Staff
September 17, 2014 – 12:46 PM

The players at TuS Makkabit Frankfurt remember Kreshnik B. as a reliable defender. As a member of the Jewish football club's youth B-team, he kept opposing players away from his goal and even shot a few of his own. Kreshnik B., who is Muslim, happily wore the blue jersey of the team, despite it being decorated with Hebraic lettering and the Star of David. "He was proud to take the field with the star," club leader Alon Meyer recalls.

Not even three years after playing for the team, Kreshnik swapped the football field for the battlefield. In the name of Allah, he allegedly joined the radical Islamist organization Islamic State in its fight to set up an Islamic caliphate in the Middle East. "Jihad these days is an individual's duty," he wrote his sister from the Middle East and asked her to pray that he might fall as a martyr. "I'm chillin', fighting, doing my job for Allah. I take my Kalashnikov and bismillah," he rhymed.

The five months that Kreshnik B., now 20, spent in Syria fighting for Islamic State are now the subject of a case which began in Frankfurt on Monday. He stands accused of membership in a terrorist organization and of "preparing a serious act of violent subversion."

His trial marks the first time that a presumed Islamic State fighter has appeared in front of a German court. It won't be the last. The number of jihadists who have left the country for Syria along with the number of Islamic State's supporters in Germany is already much higher than it ever was during the Afghanistan conflict. Currently, there are around 140 investigations under way in Germany against Islamic State fighters or their supporters. And the number is climbing. Federal state prosecutors have taken on 33 cases involving more than 60 suspects, but the flood of cases has begun clogging up dockets across the country.