A court in Frankfurt has sentenced a German national to three years and nine months in prison, after he admitted fighting with Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria. Kreshnik Berisha spent six months in Syria last year, fighting with IS in Aleppo province. Berisha was nabbed in December 2013 immediately on his return to Frankfurt. Berisha is one of an estimated 500 Germans who have traveled to Syria to fight with IS. Of those 500, German intelligence estimates that that 180 have returned to Germany and another 60 have been killed in Syria, nine in suicide attacks.
Claudia Dantsche, who counsels families whose relatives are at risk of radicalization, said that there has been "a massive increase in propaganda from recruiters for ISIS...They have Germans spreading their propaganda on Facebook in German, in groups frequented by teenagers and on pages of people they identify with. The extent and effect of this radical direct approach is a new thing."