BERLIN -- The Islamic State is using the influx of migrants into Europe to smuggle in terrorists "camouflaged as refugees," the chief of Germany's domestic intelligence service said Friday after the arrest of a 35-year-old Algerian man.
The man, who was said to have trained with the Islamic State in Syria and is suspected of planning an attack in Germany, crossed into the Bavarian state at the height of the refugee inflow in the fall.
He was detained early Thursday with a woman described in news reports as his wife at a shelter for asylum applicants in North Rhine-Westphalia.
The investigation into the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris has revealed that some of the suspected attackers entered Europe by disguising themselves as migrants.
More than 1 million migrants arrived in Germany last year, many of them Afghans, Iraqis and Syrians fleeing war and persecution.
The head of Germany's domestic intelligence service, Hans-Georg Maassen, said Thursday's raids and detention of the Algerian couple, and of a third Algerian, a man, age 49, in Berlin came after investigators determined that "there are people in Germany who are pursuing plans to carry out attacks, but there was no concrete indication of an imminent terrorist crime."
Maassen, speaking on the public television station ZDF, declined to say whether Berlin was the possible target of an attack, as reported in the German news media.
Asked whether the arrest of the Algerian couple at a refugee shelter showed that terrorists were being smuggled into Europe in the migrant wave, Maassen confirmed that was the case.
In the Paris attacks, "We saw that the Islamic State consciously slips terrorists into the immigration wave, and has done so," Maassen said.
Authorities in Europe have "seen repeatedly that terrorists are being smuggled in, camouflaged as refugees," he said.
"That is a fact that security authorities must always seek to recognize and identify."
One raid Thursday took place at another asylum shelter, in Hanover, where police were said to have sought a 26-year-old Algerian, but it was not clear whether he had been detained.
Maassen said there were international arrest warrants for at least some of those detained Thursday because they were believed to have had contacts with a terrorist organization, but he did not elaborate.
Asked how much Germany should fear a terrorist attack, Maassen suggested that was the wrong question.
"The expression 'fear' is the wrong one here," he said. "We are in a situation which is serious, and we have a high risk that there can be a terrorist attack."
But, he added, security services and the police were on high alert.
"Our goal is to minimize the risk," he said.
A Section on 02/06/2016