German police on Tuesday morning arrested five men accused of recruiting members for the Islamic State terror organization. The suspects, aged between 26 and 50, formed a national jihadist network, the country’s chief prosecutor announced in a news release.

Officials said the arrests were made in the states of North-Rhine Westphalia and Lower Saxony and identified the suspects by their given names and initials of their last names. They said the group’s ringleader was 32-year-old Iraqi national Ahmed Abdulaziz Abdullah A., also known as Abu Walaa in Islamist circles. He is said to have openly professed his allegiance to the Islamic State and is accused of instigating and helping young men join the group in Syria. Two other suspects, identified as Turkish national Hasan C. and German-Serb Boban S., are alleged to have taught Arabic and radical Islamist thought to potential foreign fighters. German citizen Mamoud O. and Cameroonian Ahmed F.Y. are suspected of having organized the trips. At least one young man and his family were sent to Syria by the group, according to the prosecutor. The five are set to be arraigned by Wednesday.

The incident follows a string of similar arrests in Germany. Last week, police in Berlin detained a 27-year-old Syrian accused of having ties to the Islamic State. More than a dozen people have been arrested in Germany this year on suspicion of supporting the terrorist group.

Justice Minister Heiko Maas called Tuesday’s arrest an “important strike against the extremist scene in Germany.”

According to German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, the investigation against the group had been launched a year ago. At the end of last month, a 22-year-old who had renounced the Islamic State after returning from several months in a Syrian region held by the group, incriminated A. as the Islamic State’s “No. 1 in Germany,” the paper wrote.

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