German authorities also say the Tunisian man had ties to a notorious group of local ISIS sympathizers led by a man named Abu Walaa, who was arrested in November alongside four others accused of operating an ISIS recruitment network.
Der Spiegel, citing local officials, said that Amri and Abu Walaa were in “regular contact.”…
Abu Walaa reportedly gave sermons urging his listeners to join the jihad, and his mosque was raided by police during the summer. Among other things, he is suspected of links to an attack on a Sikh temple in April of this year.
But that may have been just the start. Germany’s intelligence community suggests Abu Walaa is actually “the worst of all” thanks to information coming from conversations with returning ISIS fighters. (Upward of 800 Germans have gone off to join ISIS in Syria and Iraq, authorities say.) A 22-year-old defector from the terrorist group told German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung that Abu Walaa was an ISIS recruiter and the group’s top leader in Germany.
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