A former British student who has returned from Syria after fighting along the Islamic State has told German interrogators that the dreaded terror group is planning major simultaneous attacks across the UK and Europe.
Harry Sarfo, a 27-year-old ISIS recruit who spent time in the terrorist group’s stronghold of Raqqa earlier this year, told German security officials that virtually all foreign fighters are being asked if they will return to their home countries to carry out attacks.
“They want something that happens everywhere at the same time,” Sarfo told the security officials, according to an account published in German news magazine Der Spiegel.
Sarfo, a German national who converted to Islam in london and is linked to British terrorists in Syria, claimed he was repeatedly approached to volunteer for such a mission. He however, told recruiters that he was not willing to carry out a domestic atrocity and later fled ISIS.
The magazine last week named him only as “Harry S” in accordance with German media convention relating to suspects in live investigations. However, The Sunday Times has established Sarfo’s full identity from British sources.
Any information he has provided to the German authorities will almost certainly be shared with British intelligence agency MI5 and Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism unit.
Although he grew up in Germany to Christian parents of Ghanaian origin, Sarfo is said to have moved as a teenager to london with his mother after becoming involved in petty criminality in Bremen city.
He appears on the electoral roll at addresses in Enfield, north london, between 2007 and 2012. But it is thought he may have been in the capital from as early as 2005 and enrolled at a technical college. Following Sarfo’s conversion to Islam, he adopted the name Bilal and appears to have become involved with hardline fundamentalist groups in london. last year, he travelled on pilgrimage to Mecca with at least one another British man.