Iraqi, 17, held for 'bomb attack plot' in Germany or Britain

A 17-year-old Iraqi suspected of planning an explosives attack on behalf of the Islamic State militant group in Germany or Britain, was remanded in custody, German prosecutors said on Thursday.

The teenager, identified only as Deday A., hoarded a large amount of pyrotechnics at his home and allegedly planned to use the black powder to make an explosive device, federal prosecutors said.

The suspect, who was first arrested on February 13 in the state of Hesse, faced a judge on Wednesday who ordered him remanded in pre-trial custody on charges of having planned an attack.

"The accused is alleged to have procured explosives to commit an Islamist attack in Germany or Britain," the prosecutors said in a statement, adding that he was a suspected member of IS.

German authorities have been on heightened alert since IS claimed a lorry assault on a Berlin Christmas market in December 2016 which killed 12 people.

Dozens of suspects have been arrested or charged over alleged terror plots.

In late January, Germany's Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen warned the war against the Islamic State group is not over, even if the militants have been "largely defeated militarily”.

The battle must continue and IS must not be allowed "to retreat into safe havens", she said.

'False flag'

Germany has taken in more than one million asylum seekers since 2015, many from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, sparking an anti-foreigner backlash and a spate of racist hate crimes.

But concerns were raised in May when two German soldiers were revealed to have posed as Syrian migrants to plot the false-flag assassination of pro-refugee politicians.

The suspect, identified only as Maximilian T., aged 27, was detained from the same Franco-German army base near Strasbourg where his co-conspirator, Franco Albrecht, was also stationed.

The pair had drawn up a list of pro-refugee politicians to kill, including former German President Joachim Gauck and Justice Minister Heiko Maas.

Albrecht was set to carry out the attack while Maxilimilian T., who served in the same infantry battalion, created the death list and helped procure a French-made handgun from Vienna.

Another man, 24-year-old student Mathias F, was also arrested for planning the murder, which the group had hoped would "be seen by the population as a radical Islamist terrorist act committed by a recognised refugee", prosecutors said.

Both Maximilian and Albrecht were part of online far-right extremist chat groups, while it has emerged that the latter expressed extremist views in a 2014 master's thesis which theorised that immigration would end Western civilisation.