FLASHBACK (1 year ago from NYT): Germany Claims Terrorists Posing as Refugees

Here’s something that will blow your mind.

A New York Times story from one year ago where Germany claimed it had evidence terrorists were posing as refugees.

Incredible that even the New York Times posted this story.

We should all be mindful of this as the refugee crisis is still top news right now.

Here is some of that report from the New York Times of all places:

An Algerian couple, suspected of planning a terrorist attack in Berlin and arrested on suspicion of belonging to the Islamic State, entered Germany late last year and applied for asylum as Syrian refugees — part of a pattern of terrorism suspects entering Europe under the guise of fleeing war, the German authorities said Friday.

The police in Berlin published a photo they said was of the husband, showing a bearded man with his face blacked out, pointing a pistol at the camera, with two Kalashnikov rifles propped up beside him on a sofa strewn with other weapons. The photo was believed to have been taken in Syria, where German media reports said the man had received terrorist training with the Islamic State.

The man, not named by the police but identified by the media as Farid A., 34, and his wife, 27, had been sought on an international warrant initiated by the Algerian authorities. They were under surveillance at their refugee shelter in the town of Attendorn, about an hour’s drive northeast of Cologne, and were arrested in coordinated raids in three states on Thursday. They were suspected of plotting an attack in Berlin, the police said Friday in a statement.

As many as one million asylum seekers entered Germany last year. An initial warm welcome, particularly for Syrians, soured after the terrorist attacks in and around Paris in November, which killed 130 people, and the police found documents suggesting that some assailants had entered Europe posing as refugees.

Hundreds of assaults and robberies during New Year’s Eve celebrations in Cologne, attributed to young men of Arab or North African backgrounds, further heightened fears over the consequences of the migrant influx.

On Friday, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, Hans-Georg Maassen, said the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, was using the wave of newcomers to infiltrate Europe.

The authorities in Europe have “seen repeatedly that terrorists are being smuggled in, camouflaged as refugees,” Mr. Maassen said on ZDF public television. “That is a fact that security authorities must always seek to recognize and identify.”

The Berlin police said on Friday that they had first received a tip in December from Mr. Maassen’s agency, the Office for Protection of the Constitution, that a terrorist plot might be brewing. On Jan. 10, the agency gave an unspecified tip that involved suspected supporters of ISIS possibly involved in planning an attack in Berlin, a police statement said.