German police on Tuesday (November 8th) arrested five men suspected of links to the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" (ISIL) who allegedly sought to recruit fighters for the group, AFP reported.

"The five accused formed a pan-regional Salafist-jihadist network, with the accused Ahmad Abdulaziz Abdullah A. taking on the leading role," said a statement from the prosecutors' office.

The 32-year-old Iraqi leader of the group is an influential preacher who goes by the alias Abu Walaa, said Ralf Jaeger, interior minister of the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

"The aim of the network led by him is to send people to ISIL in Syria ," said federal prosecutors.

The five were arrested in the northern state of Lower Saxony and in North Rhine-Westphalia.

The network had sent at least one young man and his family to join ISIL in Syria, prosecutors said.

Meanwhile, a German court Monday put on trial two Syrian men who say they are refugees but face charges of being human traffickers responsible for eight deaths on the high seas a year ago.

Prosecutors charge that Ahmad Ghandour, 18, and his brother Fouad, 20, were working with a Kurdish gang of people smugglers who forced refugees aboard an unseaworthy vessel.

The gang had allegedly promised to take Iraqi citizens from the Turkish resort of Bodrum to the Greek island of Kos for around $2,500 each, the Cologne court heard. The verdict is expected on December 6th.