In the rush to cross into Europe, following German Chancellor Angela Merkel's announcement that her country's doors were open to refugees, the German the Federal Bureau of Migration and Refugees (BAMF) struggled to deal with the sheer volume of migrants arriving in its borders.
A year on, politicians in the German Bundestgag have been told that only around 20-30 percent of migrants arriving showed any form of identity and that many passports being checked now are being found to be fake, giving rise to fears that there could be hundreds — or even thousands — of Daesh sleepers in Germany.
According the Die Welt newspaper, at the height of the migration, hundreds of thousands were making their way into Germany each month via the West Balkan route and — without border controls — staff from BAMF were overwhelmed. The interior ministry has called a summit to discover who actually entered Germany in 2015.
Daesh cell in Germany is 2nd refugee-infiltrator disrupted this year. Germans waited to interdict so as to build network picture.
— Tom Rogan (@TomRtweets) 13 September 2016
Attorney General Erardo Rautenberg said:
"We have known, since the Paris attacks that Daesh sleepers may be among the mass of migrants."
More Sleeper Cells
There is evidence that sleeper cells may have been set up as early as 2012 — which the 2015 influx may have joined. According to a 99-page manifesto, "Black Flags from Rome" — which intelligence agencies have been aware of since January 2015 — radicalized Muslims who have been trained in Syria were told to form "sleeper" cells in Europe — particularly in areas of cities and towns that were heavily populated by Muslims.
"While the experienced Islamic State fighters left Syria for Europe, the European Muslims who had emigrated to the Islamic State would train within the training camps, and nobody doubted — neither the Islamic State, nor the West — that some of these trainees would be sent back to Europe to form their own secret cells to continue the Jihad and to seek revenge for the western occupation of Muslim lands," the manifesto states.
"These fighters would simply receive their training and be told to go back to their European home countries, to go into 'sleeper cell' mode until the Khalifah (Caliph) Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ordered to start attacks in Europe."
