German intelligence services learned that a new militant group with ten members, headed by a German of Syrian origins, had sprung up in the port city.
The leader was identified as Rami M in a secret report that has been leaked to Die Welt newspaper and the investigative television show Report Mainz.
The ten members are understood to have left Hamburg early this year to attend paramilitary camps in the Hindu Kush, however, two are thought to have recently returned.
All of them were said to have used Hamburg's Taiba Mosque as a meeting place, the same location frequented by the 9/11 leader Mohammed Atta and his accomplices. They went onto carry out the attacks on New York's World Trade Centre and Washington. |