Germany,
unlike France or the United Kingdom within the EU, opposed sending
military assistance or direct intervention to topple Bashar
al-Assad1.
This has not prevented a growing number of Germans to join the jihad
in Syria. German media also talk in recent months of a true German
"training camp" in Syria to attract volunteers
practicing the language of Goethe. The phenomenon is not new. In
2009, a "German" camp was thus installed in Pakistan
to supply the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan related to al-Qaeda. In
2012, the German intelligence evokes genuine German "Salafist
colony" in Egypt , including more than 60 fighters,
including the famous rapper Denis Cuspert ("Deso Dogg")
that had escaped the surveillance of German security and fighting now
Syria. In mid- November, the German police also stated that "Deso
Dogg" plans to conduct attacks against Germany, that it
immediately denies in a video. There are rumors of his death in late
November 2013, but it seems rather that he is hospitalized in Syria
or in Turkey.The
Germans, as a specialist says, are not in the majority in al-Nosra or
ISIS, who are victims of "spy mania" distrust
towards new converts as "Deso Dogg". The German
security services had already been put on the spot in 2012 by the New
York Times which stated that a Tunisian who might have served as
a bodyguard to bin Laden, one year before the September 11 attacks,
was quietly lived in Germany for some time. Sami A., because of his
experience and training in the camps Affghanistan would have been a
source of influx of volunteers for jihad. One estimate, in December
2013, reported 230 Germans, according to the high case, which would
have left to Syria. In March, the number was only 60, before moving
to 150 in August. The Land of Hessen had to install a special
monitoring device to curb departures teenagers to the Syrian jihad.
On 23 cases studied, most of the recruits were under 25 years and 9
are still in school. The Minister of Interior has created a device to
differentiate radical tendencies among the candidates initially on
the model of what has been done to neo-Nazi and extreme right-wing
movements.
German
fighters had also participated in the massacre of Syrian Christians.
Germany fears that the return of these fighters radicalize Salafist
fringe and the tension is high with Turkey, accused of having
maintained a porous border with Syria and have favored the access of
the Syrian battlefield European volunteers. In January 2014, the
German security services estimate that 270 people have already left
to fight in Syria, some being returned to Germany. The number
increased since the second half of 2013, includes both young men
between 18 and 25 but also minors and women. Fifteen Germans had
already died in Syria2.
In
November 2013, Burak Karan, a former German national team player of
age 17, of Turkish origin, was pronounced dead in Syria killed during
an air raid on Azaz, on the Turkish border, October 11th. Karan had
begun to evolve in the junior national team in 2003, having started
in the team Wuppertal in west of Germany. He ended his promising
career in 2008 at age 20. It falls under the influence of a radical
Muslim, Emrah Erdogan, who tried to take him to Afghanistan with
himself and his brother. The latter was killed by a U.S. drone strike
in October 2010 ; Emrah, which remains in the border area with
Pakistan until January 2011, left to join the Shabaab in Somalia in
February, was arrested in Tanzania in June 2012 and extradited to
Germany. Burak contact in 2011 Mohamed Mahmoud , Imam of the Mosque
of Solingen and Millatu-Ibrahim group leader, a group banned by the
authorities in mid-2012. Mahmoud has since been imprisoned in Turkey
trying to reach Syria. Burak Karan left for Syria with his wife and
two children in early 2013, supposedly to help distribute
humanitarian aid ; but a photo released by a Syrian armed group Oct.
22, 2013 shows him with an AK -47 in hand and gives him the pseudonym
Abu Abdullah al- Turki3.
 |
| Burak Karan.-Source : http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/_np/5211/22185211.jpg |
In
February 2014, a video confirms that Deso Dogg, aka Abu Talha al-
Almani, survived his wounds, received in November 2013 after an
airstrike in northern Syria. Denis Cuspert, his real name, was born
in 1975 in Berlin, had abandoned the rap in 2010 to convert to an
Islamic preacher. In late 2011, he befriended Mohamed Mahmoud, alias
Abu Usama al- Gharib, an Egyptian-born Austrian. The latter,
sentenced to prison in 2008, runs a platform for jihadist propaganda.
He left Austria to Berlin after his release from prison in September
2011. With Cuspert he goes to the Land of North Rhine-Westphalia
where they founded a Salafist association, Millatu Ibrahim. In June
2012, the German authorities banned the association after clashes
between Salafists and police in Bonn, which wounded two policemen.
Cuspert, who takes then the nom de guerre of Abu Talha al-Almani,
left Germany. He goes to Syria in summer 2013, but in its propaganda
videos, like that of November 201 , he does not preach a return to
Germany in order to extend the jihad ; its purpose is to encourage
Germans to come and fight in Syria. In February 2014, we see him
distribute winter clothing to children in rebel-controlled areas ;
donations come from Germany and clothing were provided by al-Nosra.
German authorities then consider that at least 270 people are
involved, since 2011 , in the Syrian jihad4.
 |
| Deso Dog en Syrie.-Source : http://bilad-alsham.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/1176405_230380097115402_829948734_n.jpg |
According
to the German authorities, volunteers receive significant financial
support from the Muslim community. Thousands of euros are collected
by donation. A training camp for German volunteers was established in
northern Syria, and welcomes the Germans who come mainly from the
Land of North Rhine-Westphalia (where a third of the German Muslim
community lives). Others come from Hesse, Berlin, Bavaria and
Hamburg. An information center was even built on site to broadcast
propaganda for the jihad in Germany5.
Volunteers would be recruited by the sermons of radical imams and
solicitation by Internet6.
Some
evidence suggests that the Germans fight together in Syria in some
formations. Philip Berger, a convert, and Mustafa K., come from
Lohberg, a district of the city of Dinslaken, in western Germany. No
less than seven young people in this neighborhood have left to do
jihad in Syria, where they formed the "Lohberg Brigade"7.
On 22 April 2014, Deso Dogg is killed after a double suicide-attack
of al-Nosra against ISIS in eastern Syria8.
1Benjamin
Weinthal, « The German jihadists' colony in Syria », The
Long War Journal, 19 décembre
2013.
4
John Rosenthal, « German rapper, now jihadist still alive in
Syria », Al-Monitor, 21 février 2014.
5
Fin juillet 2013, le site Shamcenter est lancé en 5 langues
différentes, dont l'allemand :
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-camp-collection-point-for-german-jihadists-in-syria-a-929026.html
6Foreign fighters from Western countries in the ranks of the rebel
organizations affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the global jihad in
Syria, Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center,
3 février 2014.