German special police units guard an entrance of an apartment building in the Wedding district in Berlin Jan. 16, 2015.

More than 200 German police officers raided suspected Islamist cells in and around Berlin early on Friday, arresting an alleged leader of a group planning to carry out an attack in Syria, police said.

The arrested man is a 41-year-old man of Turkish origin and is suspected of “leading an Islamist extremist group made up of Turkish and Russian nationals from (the Caucasus regions’ of) Chechnya and Dagestan,” the police said in a statement, adding that “there is no indication that the group was preparing attacks inside Germany.”

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