Instant messaging sites have been targeted by radical ‘Child Catchers’ to recruit disaffected young people in Germany, the head of the country’s domestic intelligence agency said.
Hans-Georg Massen said that the terrorists had been using ‘Nazi-like’ tactics to lure children into rebelling against their parents and society.
He said: “On social media networks there are practically headhunters who approach young people and get them interested in this (Islamist) ideology.”
Maassen used a teenage German-Moroccan girl identified only as "Safia S.", who is accused of stabbing a policeman at a train station in Hanover last February.
He also gave the example of a 12-year-old German-Iraqi boy who tried to detonate two explosive devices in the western town of Ludwigshafen in December.
About 20% of an estimated 900 people from Germany who have been recruited by ISIS to join the fight in Iraq and Syria are women, some as young as 13 or 14, he said.
German authorities are monitoring 548 Islamists deemed to be a security risk, but German law does not allow for their arrest until they have committed a crime.
He added: “We’ve seen this with Islamic State, but now we’re seeing this with so-called ‘good citizens’ who are being radicalised, and we worry that this radicalisation could be transformed into a willingness to commit violent acts.”