A 30-year-old Syrian medical student living in Germany and currently on trial for a plot targetting a Berlin synagogue has been accused of trying to train his girlfriend’s seven-year-old son as a jihadi soldier.
According to the indictment against him, the 30-year-old Syrian is thought to have shown the 7-year-old boy various Islamic State propaganda videos glorifying child soldiers, “showing how other children fought for the Islamic State, shot other people and were shot themselves,” Kronen Zeitung reports.
There was also an element of physical abuse in the relationship between the Syrian and the boy, according to prosecutors. They say that the man would strike the 7-year-old in the stomach with a wooden stick.
During his plot to attack a synagogue, the 30-year-old is said to have downloaded instructions on how to make an explosive device and even reached out to other Islamic radicals he knew, in order to see if they would join him as a suicide bomber.
The prosecutor said the man wanted “as many victims as possible from among the unbelievers.”
The Syrian, who came to Germany in 2012 on a student visa, said in court that he would defend himself against the accusations. He is currently under indictment for being a member of a terrorist group, abuse of a minor, and plotting a large-scale violent attack.
‘Junior Jihadi’ Was in Care of Known Islamist Before Attempted Attack
https://t.co/XXhwMJXR0y— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) July 13, 2017
Young children have been repeatedly recruited by the Islamic State terror group in Europe, with some attempting out carrying out attacks.
The most well-known is 15-year-old Safia S., who stabbed a policeman at a train station in Hanover. the young girl had been radicalised by hate preacher Pierre Vogel and Islamic State propaganda online.
Also in Germany, and only days before the Christmas market attack in Berlin that killed a dozen people in December 2016, a 12-year-old was arrested after attempting to blow up a Christmas market in Ludwigshafen with a makeshift nail bomb that failed to explode.
A month later in January 2017 it was discovered that another 12-year-old in neighbouring Austria was a member of an Islamic State terror cell.
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