German intelligence officer 'arrested over Islamist plot' raising fears the spy

[MikeWB]

A German intelligence officer has reportedly been arrested over a suspected Islamist plot to bomb the agency's headquarters in Cologne.

The 51-year-old official was said to have made a "partial confession" to the plot, according to Der Spiegel.

The suspect attempted to pass on "sensitive information about the BfV (Germany's domestic security agency), which could lead to a threat to the office", an official told the newspaper.

"He is accused of making Islamist remarks online under a false name, and offering internal information during chats," a BfV spokeswoman told AFP.

The suspect has, since April, been engaged in gathering intelligence on the Islamist scene in Germany, Der Spiegel said.

Online chats were apparently found between the suspect and other Islamists in which he attempted to recruit them to the intelligence agency to mount an attack on "non-believers".

The man's family reportedly knew nothing of his conversion to Islam and subsequent radicalisation.

Germany is on high alert following several terror attacks over the summer.

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant claimed two attacks in late July - on a train near Wuerzburg and on a music festival in Ansbach - in which asylum-seekers wounded 20 people in total.

In addition, security forces had to respond to an attack in a shopping centre in the city of Munich in which nine people were killed by an 18-year-old German-Iranian who had been in psychiatric treatment and was obsessed with mass killings.