Germany arrests Jordanian intelligence operative who spied on mosque
August 9, 2018 1 Comment
Authorities in Germany announced yesterday the arrest of a German national who is accused of spying on a central German mosque on behalf of Jordan, according to media reports. The man was reportedly arrested on Tuesday at an unknown location by officers of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). In a press statement, the agency said the man is a 33-year-old German national named “Alexander B.”. German privacy rules forbid the public identification of crime suspects prior to their conviction in a court of law.
According to the public statement issued by the BfV, the 33-year-old man is believed to have worked for “a Jordanian intelligence agency” —most likely the Jordanian General Intelligence Department, or GID, which is a branch of the Jordanian Armed Forces— since at least 2016. He is accused of having infiltrated a Sunni mosque in the central German city of Hildesheim, located 20 miles southeast of Hanover in Germany’s Lower Saxony region. His mission, according to the BfV, was to keep tabs on mosque goers who expressed support for the ideology of the Islamic State, and might even consider traveling to the Middle East to join the radical group. The alleged Jordanian intelligence operative was also tasked with reporting on news reaching the mosque from those of its members who had already gone to the Middle East and joined the Islamic State.
Last year, German authorities closed down the Hildesheim mosque, known in German as Deutschsprachiger Islamkreis Hildesheim e. V. (DIK), and arrested its imam, Ahmad Abdulaziz Abdullah A., known as Abu Walaa. The Iraqi-born imam was charged with supporting a foreign terrorist organization by actively recruiting young Muslims on behalf of the Islamic State. The mosque has since remained closed, because authorities believe that it had become a beehive of fundamentalist activity. Jordan is one of the Middle East’s most liberal states and has been targeted repeatedly by the Islamic State, which views its leadership as pro-Western. However, it appears that Alexander B. was spying on the Hildesheim mosque —therefore on German soil— without having informed the host country of his activities. The government of Jordan has not commented on his arrest.
► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 09 August 2018 | Permalink
A rare armed attack on a Jordanian intelligence agency facility has left five people dead, including three intelligence officers. The attack took place on Monday at the General Intelligence Department (GID) building in the Baqa’a refugee camp, located just north of the capital Amman. Built in 1968, Baqa’a is the largest of Jordan’s 10 government-sanctioned refugee camps, and houses 100,000 Palestinians —approximately 10 percent of the country’s 1 million-strong Palestinian population. 
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Jordanian intelligence thwarted Islamic State plan to kill soldiers in Jordan, Israel
July 28, 2021 by Ian Allen Leave a comment
THE INTELLIGENCE SERVICES OF Jordan allegedly thwarted a plan by a cell of Islamic State fighters to carry out an armed attack across two countries, with the ultimate aim of killing Jordanian and Israeli troops. The state-owned Jordanian newspaper Al-Ra’I said on Tuesday that the attack was to be carried out in Gawr as-Safi, a sparsely inhabited area of the Jordan Valley, which is adjacent to the southern portion of Israel’s Dead Sea region.
The paper said that Jordan’s General Intelligence Department caught on to a suspected Islamist militant in December of 2020. The suspect led them to a larger cell of three other militants, who were arrested in February of this year. Their goal was reportedly to attack a Jordanian border post in Gawr as-Safi and kill the border guards there. They then planned to cross into Israel and open fire on Israeli soldiers, with the aim of killing them, in what appears to have been planned as a murder-suicide mission.
In the indictment of the four men, Jordanian authorities claim that they were found to be hoarding a cache of weapons, which they planned to use to carry out their attack in Jordan and Israel. They now face charges of conspiring to commit an act of terrorism and propagating the ideology of the Islamic State, which the Jordanian government designates as an international terrorist organization.
Meanwhile, a new assessment of the Islamic State by the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team of the United Nations’ Security Council, warns that the militant organization remains strong in parts of the Middle East. The report, issued this week, recognizes that the Islamic State has suffered setbacks in recent years. But it cautions against dismissing the threat, noting that the militant group “has evolved into an entrenched insurgency” that is “exploiting weaknesses in local security to find safe havens and [is] targeting [government] forces” across the region.
► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 28 July 2021 | Permalink
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