The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) claims to have located previously unknown ISIS fighters within Germany by employing a novel investigation method. According to reports from the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, NDR, and WDR, the authorities are analyzing hundreds of lists sourced directly from inside the “Islamic State”. These documents include payroll records and membership rosters. Based on this analysis, the agencies have initiated investigations against approximately 30 men who entered Germany in recent years; these individuals had not previously been flagged as Islamists by German security authorities.
While the BKA declined to comment on the details of the investigations to the three news outlets, stating only that “a multitude” of legal proceedings are underway, six former ISIS members have already been convicted in Germany due to the data analysis. The BKA indicated that numerous other investigations could follow.
In total, the BKA has gathered about 400 such documents. This may mark the first Western investigative authority to systematically utilize such data treasures to track ISIS members. Specifically, the BKA compares names from one payroll list, which contains entries for nearly 50,000 people, against data from the central foreign register, which stores information on refugees, for example. Through this process, the authorities have already identified around 75 suspected ISIS fighters who are presumably located in Germany, though not all of them are currently under investigation.
Furthermore, the BKA has started automating the comparison of photographs of ISIS individuals with images stored in the foreign register and police databases, yielding nearly 100 additional matches. More results are expected, as investigators reportedly have not even processed half of the names from the payroll list. When questioned by the media, the BKA declined to release details on the outcomes, describing the evaluations as “complex and resource-intensive” and an “ongoing process”.
