A Tunisian man arrested in Hesse, Germany, on Wednesday on suspicion of recruiting for IS is also accused of involvement in the deadly 2015 attack on the Bardo Museum in Tunis, prosecutors said.
Tunisian authorities issued an arrest warrant for the 36-year-old last year on suspicion of “participating in planning and carrying out” the attack, as well as a deadly terrorist assault on the border town of Ben Guerdane last March, the prosecutor’s office in the western state of Hesse said in a statement, the German new website Thelocal.de reported.
Twenty-one people, mostly European tourists, were killed at the scene of the attack of Bardo National Museum in March 2015, which was claimed by IS. Another victim died 10 days later.
Tunisian police killed two of the gunmen during the assault, but the third attacker managed to escape.
Police in Hesse raided over 50 properties early on Wednesday morning and arrested the Tunisian suspect over an alleged plan to carry out a terror attack in Germany.
As well as searching addresses in Frankfurt, police carried out dawn raids in Offenbach, Darmstadt and the state capital, Wiesbaden. The raids were conducted on apartments, commercial properties and mosques.
A total of 16 males between the ages of 16 and 46 are suspects in the investigation and searches involved more than 1,100 officers.
The 36-year-old Tunisian is accused of recruiting for IS in Germany and of planning to carry out a terror attack. Police say he was in the process of building up a terror network with the aim of carrying out an attack. He was the only person taken into custody.
The suspect arrived in Germany as an asylum seeker in August 2015, the prosecutors said, after already living in the country for a decade some years earlier.
