A prosecutor in the Israeli city of Haifa has indicted seven Israeli Arabs, including a lawyer from Nazareth, for attempting to set up a branch of the Islamic State (IS) in Israel.
The seven defendants were allegedly part of a plot to carry out terror attacks in Israel and target Druze Israelis, security personnel, and others, Israel's internal security agency Shin Bet said Sunday.
They face charges of membership and activity in a banned organization), aiding a terror group and attempted contact with a foreign agent, for their plot to set up a branch of IS in Israel and eventually fight in Syria. The seven men were arrested in November and December, but the case was kept under a gag order until the Haifa Court removed the order when the indictment was filed Sunday.
The Shin Bet and the indictment said that all seven have confessed that since June, they have worked together to form a Salafist-Jihadist group and pledged their allegiance to IS. The cell carried out secret meetings during which they discussed Jihadist thinking, the fighting in Syria, and prepared themselves to fight with ISIS in Syria, said the indictment.
They also learned how to make Molotov cocktails and in July bought animals to train at slaughtering them in order to build their nerve for the fighting in Syria but also to train them for “slaughtering infidels in Syria”, in the words of the Shin Bet and the indictment.
