DUSSELDORF, Germany, Dec. 15 (UPI) -- The arrest of a German man shows the "Dusseldorf Cell" of suspected al-Qaida-linked terrorists remains active, authorities said this week.
The German weekly Der Spiegel reported Tuesday that the arrest last Thursday of an unnamed 22-year-old man demonstrated the German federal police are still looking for members of the al-Qaida linked group.
The Germany-born man, whose name wasn't released due to Germany's privacy laws, was arrested in Bochum, Germany, where he was allegedly living under an assumed name, the weekly said.
Prosecutors allege "Halil S.," who had been under surveillance for months, was seen at the apartment of the Dusseldorf Cell's accused ringleader, Moroccan Abdeladim el-K. The latter was arrested in April, allegedly after communicating with Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, the since-killed former al-Qaida chief of operations.
Authorities allege "Halil S." had used an online credit card fraud scheme to raise nearly $7,000 to finance terror activities and had been in contact with Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen and al-Qaida propagandist who was killed in Yemen in a CIA drone attack this year.
Anti-terror police say they believe the cell has been tasked with carrying out a major attack in Germany and is still dangerous despite the deaths of Rahman and Awlaki.
Der Spiegel said "Halil S." was considered Germany's top terror target but added GSG-9 -- the federal police's elite counter-terrorism squad -- was seeking other cell members and prosecutors were moving forward with investigations of five men thought to have ties to the Dusseldorf Cell.
Police said in April when they arrested El-K and two others the suspects were planning to attack a crowded place but hadn't picked a target, the Voice of America reported.
The fight against the Dusseldorf Cell is only one of a series of counter-terrorism efforts against al-Qaida in Germany recently.
Last year police in Afghanistan arrested a German citizen from Hamburg, Ahmed Sidiqi, in connection with an alleged plot to carry out a "Mumbai-style" attack in Germany. Der Spiegel reported the man is alleged to have had "direct ties" to Sept. 11, 2001, co-plotter Mounir el-Motassadeq.
And in May, Rami Makenesi, a German man of Syrian origin, was convicted of terrorism charges after admitting he was a member of al-Qaida and had been ordered to raise $29,000 every six months for the terror group, CNN reported.
Jorg Ziercke, chief of Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office, told Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel late last year he believes there is a hard-core group of 131 people in the country considered to be "potential offenders," with around 400 Islamic radicals in all.
He said German authorities were able to stop 26 "potentially violent Islamists" from fleeing the country between early 2009 and late 2010.
At the same time, the country is beefing up its fight against right-wing terrorism as well.
Germany's regional police and state and federal authorities said last month they'll work more closely to track neo-Nazi and other rightist extremist groups to prevent attacks.
German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said regional authorities and state and federal wings of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution would join in targeting neo-Nazis and other extremists, CNN reported.
"We are facing a new form of right-wing extremist terrorism," Friedrich said.
