Germans foil massive bomb plot
Three Islamic militants from an al-Qaeda influenced group have been arrested on suspicion of plotting imminent massive bomb attacks targeting Americans in Germany.
The three men - two German converts to Islam and a Turkish citizen linked to a group based in Central Asia - had about 700kg of hydrogen peroxide - enough to make a bomb with the explosive power of 550kg of TNT, German prosecutors said.
The same material was used by London’s 21/7 bombers.
The men were arrested on Tuesday, the same day Danish police seized eight young Muslims they suspect of plotting a bomb attack and one week before the sixth anniversary of the 11 September, 2001 attacks on the United States.
Monika Harms, a German federal prosecutor, said the suspects planned to attack institutions and establishments frequented by Americans in Germany, including discos, pubs and airports.
One possible target was the massive US air base at Ramstein - it serves as the main US logistical outpost to fuel the war in Iraq and is the arrival point for its badly wounded service personnel, most of whom are treated at the nearby Landstuhl military hospital.
Media reports also said that the men were planning attacks against Frankfurt airport.
“We were able to succeed in recognising and preventing the most serious and massive bombings,” Ms Harms said.
Germany’s GSG-9 anti- terrorist unit arrested two of the suspects on Tuesday at a holiday home in Oberschledorn, a village in central Germany.
The suspects, appearing behind closed doors yesterday at the federal court of justice in Karlsruhe, were ordered held pending trial.
A man identified as being the group’s leader, Fritz G - Germany routinely does not issue the last names of criminal suspects - is 28 and comes from Ulm in southern Germany, where he is understood to have worked at the city’s Islamic information centre after converting to Islam in the recent years.
The other German, Daniel S, 22, is also a Muslim convert and comes from Saarbrücken on the border with France. The third man is a Turk named as Adem Y, 29, who lives in Frankfurt.
Officials said the 35 per cent hydrogen peroxide solution could have been mixed with other additives to produce a bomb. “This would have enabled them to make bombs with more explosive power than the ones used in the London and Madrid bombings,” Jörg Ziercke, the head of the Federal Crime Office, Germany’s equivalent of the FBI, said.
Prosecutors said the three had undergone training at camps in Pakistan run by the Islamic Jihad Union, and had formed a German cell of the al-Qaeda influenced group.
“This group distinguishes itself through its profound hatred of US citizens,” Mr Ziercke said.
The chancellor, Angela Merkel, thanked security officials for foiling the attack, and called the arrests a “very, very great success”. She added: “This shows that terrorist dangers, in our country as well, are not abstract but are real.”
Germany, which has forces stationed in Afghanistan, has been on high alert for attacks.
But concerns about an attack have mounted since two men of Lebanese origin tried to detonate crude bombs hidden in suitcases on trains last year.
“We are under threat,” Wolfgang Schaeuble, the interior minister, said at a press conference in Berlin. “We have to remain vigilant.”
source: the scotsman
