Germany arrests 3 for recruiting Islamist fighters

German police have arrested three people they suspect recruited Islamists to fight abroad in a nationwide swoop in which documents and computer hardware were also seized.

Some 300 police participated in raids of 43 premises in the German states of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Bavaria, Berlin, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia, prosecutors in the southern city of Stuttgart said.

They believe the suspects, aged 24 to 59, ran recruitment networks that sent over 100 Islamists to fight on foreign battlefields.

The recruits were radicalised in Germany with Islamist ideology before being sent to a Koranic language school in Egypt, where they were urged to attend militant training camps, the prosecutors said.

After the training, some returned to Germany while others moved elsewhere, including Afghanistan and Pakistan.