An Islamic “radical” was recently discovered in the German domestic security service BfV. The alleged mole for the Islamic State is a convert to Islam, and was presumably “radicalized” as part of the conversion process. He was under surveillance while planning an attack with explosives, and was nabbed before he could carry out his plans.

Ava Lon, who translated the article below, includes this background on the BfV:

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) is charged with the protection of the constitution: the totality of all efforts (such as domestic espionage and the banning of political parties deemed hostile to it) undertaken to protect the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany and the basic societal order which that constitution establishes.

The translated article from Der Spiegel:

Intelligence: Islamist sneaked into Constitutional Protection

Were the spies themselves spied on? According to SPIEGEL information, an Islamic mole was planted in the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

By Martin Knobbe, Jörg Schindler and Fidelius Schmid

November 29, 2016

According to the Federal Office of Public Prosecution (BfV), the Constitutional Protection “succeeded in exposing a supposed Islamist among its employees.” The 51-year-old German is being detained, the public prosecutor in Düsseldorf informed SPIEGEL.

The man has now filed a partial confession. According to him, his goal was to infiltrate the Federal Office and gather information for an explosive strike on the main building in the Cologne district of Chorweiler. He is therefore being investigated because of the suspicion of the preparation of a serious state-endangering attack.

In addition, the accused allegedly made Islamism-friendly comments on the internet under a false name and allegedly revealed some service secrets. He tried to pass on “sensitive information about the BfV, which could lead to a threat to the office,” affirms Constitutional Protection.

The man, a bank clerk and a family father, was not stopped by Constitutional Protection until April 2016 in order to observe the Islamic scene in Germany. According to the authorities, he was “inconspicuous in the application process, during training and during his mission”.

At the same time, however, he obviously meticulously organized his secrecy. In his possession the investigators found storage media with corresponding information, for example, on assignments and deployments. This he revealed on the Internet to a chat partner under different alias accounts, as the public prosecutor Düsseldorf informed SPIEGEL.

In the chat he allegedly introduced himself as a BfV employee and offered to invite like-minded people to the Federal Office, in order to be able to attack the “unbelievers”. This would allegedly “certainly please Allah.” What he did not know: his chat partner was himself a member of Constitutional Protection. There are so far no indications that he contacted other like-minded people.

According to SPIEGEL’s information, even the family of the accused knew nothing of his conversion to Islam, which allegedly happened in 2014 by telephone. His oath of allegiance was allegedly made in the presence of the Salafist preacher and applicant Mohamed Mahmoud, a bigwig from Berlin, who is now fighting for the “Islamic State” in Syria.

The threat to internal security through Islamist activities has increasingly become the focus of Constitutional Protection in recent years. The Salafist scene is currently regarded as the most dynamically growing group of extremists in Germany. Most recently the BfV counted some 9,200 followers of this ultra-conservative movement.