Prosecutors in Germany said on Friday they had charged a German man suspected of helping launch an attack on a military base in Afghanistan with being a member of an Islamist militant group and with preparing a serious act of violent subversion.
The federal prosecutors' office said it suspected that the 26-year-old German national, identified only as Thomas U., was a member of a foreign "terrorist" association called the "German Taliban Mujahideen"(DTM) from December 2009 to July 2010. It said he had travelled to the Afghan-Pakistan border area in 2009, where he joined the DTM and that he was trained to use firearms and explosives.
In late 2009, he and other DTM members had attacked a military base used by American and Afghan armed forces, prosecutors added. They also accused him of glorifying the ideology of militant jihadists in at least two Internet messages in a bid to recruit new members for the DTM and of sending emails asking people living in Germany to join the group, provide financial support or promote it.
He was arrested in Turkey in 2010 before being extradited to Germany in May this year. The DTM's aim is to found a religious, fundamentalist society in Afghanistan. It considers attacks on Afghan and Pakistani government troops, as well as on members of the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force, as a legitimate means of achieving that goal.