Berlin police on Thursday said they carried out two raids targeting Muslims and arrested two men suspected of preparing to carry out “a serious act of violence representing a danger for the state.”
The two individuals, aged 28 and 46, had been “in contact with the Islamist movement,” police spokeswoman Patricia Braemer said.
The police gave no further details, other than to say no arms or explosives had been found and there was no indication that “an act of violence was planned for Berlin.”
The arrests came after special forces police raided an Islamic cultural center in the western district of Charlottenburg and a building in the southern suburb of Britz.
The two arrests were made in Britz, where a neighborhood was sealed off to let experts examine a suspicious object in a car that turned out to be harmless, police said earlier.
Local media reported officers had acted on a tip-off that an attack was being planned, as European police forces are on high alert following the attacks in Paris on Nov. 13.
Separately, prosecutors in Stuttgart confirmed they had arrested a 34-year-old man on suspicion of arms dealing, but declined to comment on a report that he may have supplied the militants in Paris with four guns.
“I can confirm that a man is in custody on suspicion of arms trading,” a spokesman for the prosecutor in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg told reporters, adding that the arrest had been made on Tuesday.
Earlier on Friday, German newspaper Bild reported that the man was suspected of selling four weapons to the militants who killed 130 people in Paris.
The paper said four rifles — two AK-47s made in China and two Zasatva M70s made in the former Yugoslavia — were sold online by the man on Nov. 7 to a buyer of “Arab descent.”
Four e-mails since found on the man’s smartphone indicate that he was in touch with an “Arab in Paris,” Bild said.
The paper added that French prosecutors believe the weapons were used in the Paris attacks.
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