Three Syrian migrants are currently on trial in Hamburg for being members of a terrorist cell and one of the men has admitted that the Islamic State terror organisation sent him to Germany telling him to disguise himself as a refugee.
The three Syrians, aged between 19 and 27, came to Germany during the migrant crisis in 2015 and were arrested in September of 2016 at asylum homes in Ahrensburg, Großhansdorf and Reinbek near Hamburg, Suddeutsche Zeitung reports.
For the last eight months, the judges in the court have tried to determine whether or not the men were sent by the Islamic State, or whether they were radicalised independently.
The eldest defendant, 27-year-old Mohamed A., confirmed to the judge that he had been commanded by the Islamic State terror group to infiltrate the wave of refugees and wait in Germany for further instructions.
The 27-year-old said that he trained with the terror group in its former capital of Raqqa for three months with four different weapons before heading to Europe. An Islamic State member also gave him a forged passport along with a sum of $1,500.
As early as December of 2015, three weeks after he arrived in the country, German police showed up to Mohamed’s asylum home and told him they had an eye on him. As a result, no contact from the Islamic State came.
The fear of the terror group sending fighters to Europe as asylum seekers has been constant since 2015 and many warned that the group would employ such tactics.
The German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) released a report in late 2016 claiming that hundreds of jihadists have come to Europe disguised as refugees, and last year the Heritage Foundation released a report showing that asylum seekers made up 54 percent of the suspects in terror plots uncovered in Germany.