MOSCOW, October 17 (RIA Novosti) - Germany may confiscate the ID cards of the country's suspected terrorists in order to prevent them from traveling to Syria and Iraq to fight for the Islamic State (IS) militant group, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said Friday.
"Potential Islamist extremists could thereby be denied an identification card," de Maiziere said as quoted by Deutsche Welle.
"We don't want terrorism to be exported. We don't want men and women to be radicalized here and to travel to Syria and Iraq to come back here ready to fight and to plan attacks," the interior minister stressed at a meeting with federal and state authorities in Berlin.
According to de Maiziere, the identification cards of the suspected terrorists would be replaced with documents similar to the one Germans receive if they lose their ID abroad.
German authorities, cited by Deutsche Welle, have said that at least 450 people have left Germany to join extremist organizations such as IS, but 150 of them are believed to have returned.
IS, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), has been fighting the Syrian government since 2012. In June 2014, the group extended its attacks to northern and western Iraq, declaring a caliphate on the territories under its control in both countries.
To impede the military advancement of the group, the United States has formed an international coalition which has been carrying out airstrikes against IS positions in Iraq and Syria.
