‘Jihad tourism’ is surging
BERLIN—(MCT) By the time Syrian aircraft bombed the house he was in, the man with tattoos of a zulfiqar sword and a teardrop was going by the name Abu Talha al-Almani.
European news reports that he may have been injured in the attack referred to him by a past alias, Deso Dogg, a sometimes troubled, sometimes brilliant Berlin gangsta rapper. But in official German records, he’s Denis Mamadou Cuspert, now 38. And to German intelligence officials and terrorism experts he represents the tip of a very disturbing trend.
Cuspert was hiding in a house in an unnamed area within Syria two weeks ago when he was injured in a bombing that also killed two children, according to rebel reports on social media. But he is only one of an estimated 170 Germans who, German intelligence officials believe, have made their way to Syria in the past year to fight the government of President Bashar Assad, often as part of al-Qaida-affiliated groups. In the past month alone, 50 have gone, German intelligence estimates.
Only a handful have returned so far, said Angela Pley, spokeswoman for the German equivalent of the National Security Agency, but that doesn’t calm German officials who worry that more will and that they will bring back military and terrorist know-how on an unprecedented scale.
















