Preacher Abu Walaa gave life tips on Facebook and carried in the network in dispute with rivals. Now the trial against him and four co-accused continues in Celle – he is said to have recruited fighters for the IS. Who is he?
The visitors of the mosque of the now forbidden “German Islam circle” (DIK) in Hildesheim knew him personally, because he showed up there again and again. But Abu Walaa was also an Internet phenomenon. The Salafist preacher operated in the network, pretty much every channel. His followers were able to enter through the text messaging service “telegram” in contact with him, he had his own “Abu Walaa-App always provides a direct line” and also on YouTube, he had a private channel. On his Facebook page, Sheikh Abu Walaa promised to “”, as he called himself, “the exhortations, Ahadithe, recitations and lessons”. But not only the Details of the Arabic lessons, the preacher offered, were published there, but also about his arrest on 8. November 2016: “As Salamu Alaikum, dear brothers and sisters Sheikh Abu Walaa was arrested Today and grade will be brought to Karlsruhe” [sic], was written there.
Abu Walaa is supposed to have recruited for the so-called Islamic state
As one of the five alleged Salafists, the native Iraqis, Abu Walaa, whose full name is Ahmad Abdulaziz Abdullah A., was charged. Abu Walaa is from the point of view of the Federal government, the Central leadership figure of the terrorist militia “Islamic state” (IS) profession in Germany. Him and four co-defendants before the higher regional court of Celle is accused of support of and membership in a foreign terrorist Association. You should recruit people for the IS, and to have eight jihadists from Germany to the IS to Syria and Iraq, smuggled, where they were involved in a Fight. Also anise Amri, killed on a Christmas market in Berlin, 12 people have been looking for Abu Walaas vicinity.
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Salafist dispute: Abu Walaa against Pierre Vogel
It is not the first Time that the 33-year-old Abu Walaa be accused of such Compounds. And even from the German Salafist circles, for example, the extremist preacher Pierre Vogel. Had condemned repeatedly in the past, public terrorist attacks in the West and had been attacked by German-IS-sympathizers violently.
Then, bird has released several Videos in which he criticized the IS and its ideology. In one of these publications, an abstracted section of Abu was recorded Walaa. For connoisseurs of the scene, it was easy to identify Abu Walaa. In the Video, the native Iraqis is implicitly a IS-sympathy. Since then, the conflict between the two was held in the social networks of more or less public, particularly in the YouTube Videos in which Abu Walaa was always just over the shoulder of the movies – be the face of the audience got to see never, therefore, he is considered to be the “man without a face”.
His Videos often start with religious songs, then the man with the long dark Beard at a Desk, most of the time he is wearing a black cloth on the head, and a silver watch on his right Hand. Before him a prayer book. In his Video “Abu Walaa – a reply to Pierre Vogel”, he takes in almost fluent German position on the allegations of his opponent. Some were ready with the Kuffar (the unbelievers) to cooperate and fall of the Ummah (the Islamic community) in the back, he says. Instead, his followers should ask rather, how they could help the Syrian and Iraqi population.
Police officers in August 2016 in the context of the DIK Hildesheim apartments searches
Almost routinely Abu denies Walaa then, to have anything to do with the IS – in the Video he does the whole 54 minutes long. The authorities see it differently: “Ahmad Abdulaziz Abdullah A., who calls himself ‘Abu Walaa’, openly to the so-called ‘Islamic state’ (IS) … the goal of the mentioned network was to bring people to the ‘IS’ to Syria or Iraq,” writes the office of the attorney General in its prosecution. He had preached in Hildesheim radical Islamic content and had nationwide been as a preacher active.
“Number 1 IS in Germany”
The authorities of Abu Walaa is as important Propagandist of the Salafist scene, already known for a long time. In 2015, he was classified in NRW as a threat. In his sermons, you’ve always been able to recognize the elements of a jihadist ideology, said the Bremen-based Islamic scholar Hazim Fouad, the Bavarian radio. The testimony of a 22-year-old IS-returnee should have charged Abu Walaa hard – he had referred to him in an Interview as “the number 1 of the IS in Germany”.
The authorities base their charges on the “data of a so-called person of trust”, to secure confidentiality. In the eyes of Ahmad Abdulaziz Abdullah A. this Person is “a Verrräter,” said the Federal Prosecutor. He had called in mid-September 2016, using a messenger service, “to kill you”.
The investigators consider Abu Walaa for a nationwide terrorist recruiter. First of all, he’s supposed to be, especially in the Rhine-Main-area, later to be stronger in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and lower Saxony. Between Salafist centres in North Rhine-Westphalia and Hildesheim there should be close Connections, explained by the lower Saxony interior Minister Boris Pistorius.
The in 2012 founded the mosque of the “Association of German Islam Hildesheim e. V.” (DIK), where Abu Walaa was often, was particularly come to the attention of the Federal intelligence service. Minister Pistorius called a “Hotspot of the radical Salafist scene”, a place where “many a radical meeting – not only from lower Saxony”.
Pierre Vogel and Abu Walaa had a fight, and wore these on the Internet
Hildesheim: place of recruitment
At least 26 young people who come from the lower Saxony Hildesheim or a reference to the city, should be in the direction of the Arab war traveling areas. Some of them have been radicalized on the DIK or enlisted. Among them Safia S. was attacked in February 2016 at the Central station in Hannover is a Federal police officer with a knife and was sentenced to a six-year youth sentence . Previously, they had been often in the mosque.
In the summer of 2016, there was in the DIK already in a RAID, Abu Walaa protested in one of his Videos without a face: The police action was not a search, but destruction. He also complained that the police “would have to enter in shoes and with dogs” to the mosque.
Abu Walaa should have had a strong influence on young people, he was a specialist for Indoctrination, say the investigators. A soul catcher. His Videos often received well over 40,000 views in YouTube. On Facebook, he had over 25,000 Followers, to which he appealed after his arrest: He need a “Dua” to Allah is a prayer of supplication.