Overview
- BKA investigators, who arrested an Iraqi suspect in Leipzig in March, are using internal ISIS records to identify former fighters now in Germany.
- The trove spans about 400 lists with nearly two million entries, anchored by a payroll file of roughly 50,000 names seized by U.S. forces near Mosul in 2016–2017.
- Reporters say about 75 suspected ex-ISIS members have been flagged in Germany, with around 30 investigations opened and at least six convictions already secured.
- Teams match names against the national foreigners registry and run automated photo checks that produced about 100 hits, while roughly 20,000 names were loaded into the Schengen Information System to stop border entries across 30 states.
- Only part of the payroll list is examined, and analysts face Arabic, handwritten, and duplicate records, yet the data also logs units, pay, ID numbers, weapons, and even records of enslaved women, which could support many more cases.