Muslim Hate in Germany
The trio reportedly aimed to set off massive blasts targeting U.S. military personnel and civilians at bases and airports.
By
Christian Retzlaff and Sebastian Rotella, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
September 6, 2007
BERLIN -- --Three people
allegedly trained in Pakistan by an Al Qaeda-linked group have been arrested on
suspicion of plotting massive car bomb attacks on U.S. troops and other
Americans near U.S. military bases and German airports, authorities said
Wednesday.
After months of surveillance during which German police secretly replaced a
stockpile of bomb chemicals with a weaker mixture, a SWAT team raided a vacation
home in a wooded village in central Germany on Tuesday and arrested the trio,
two of whom were German converts to Islam. One of the suspects grabbed an
officer's gun, shooting him in the hand and suffering a cut on the head during
the struggle.
Searches in five German states
involved 600 officers, an unprecedented number for an anti-terrorism operation
led by federal police here, on the same day that Danish police seized bomb
materials in Copenhagen and charged two men of Pakistani and Afghan origin with
plotting an attack under the direction of unnamed Al Qaeda leaders. Authorities
said they knew of no direct connection between the men arrested in the two
Northern European nations.
The two alleged plots stoked fears that a resurgent Al Qaeda was using hide-outs
near the Afghan-Pakistani border to train European-based militants to hit
Western targets in Europe, which has become a front line because it is easier to
enter than the United States and has a larger, more restive Muslim population.
The trio in Germany allegedly planned simultaneous strikes on three soft targets
that may have included discotheques, bars, restaurants or airports frequented by
American soldiers and tourists, according to German and U.S. law enforcement
officials. Because the confiscated materials could have produced the equivalent
of about 1,000 pounds of TNT, the casualty toll could have far exceeded the
transport bombings in London that killed 52 people in 2005 or those in Madrid
that killed 191 people in 2004, officials said.
The London bombs, in contrast, had only 6 to 10 pounds of explosives, Joerg
Ziercke, chief of the federal police, said at a news conference with top law
enforcement officials. "In my opinion, a high number of casualties was the main
objective; otherwise, this enormous amount of explosives is hard to explain," he
said.
The third suspect detained Tuesday in Germany is a Turkish Muslim living in the
country. The three allegedly underwent training last year at a terrorist camp in
northern Pakistan run by the Islamic Jihad Union, or IJU, an extremist network
that broke away from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a longtime Al Qaeda
ally, authorities said.
American counter-terrorism officials said they have long been concerned that the
IJU and other regional extremist groups around the world have affiliated
themselves more closely with Al Qaeda over the last several years. These groups
have become far more dangerous and aggressive toward American interests
overseas, despite their low public profile, the officials said. Over the last
three years, the IJU, also known as the Islamic Jihad Group, has broadened its
operational activity to support Al Qaeda's global agenda, a U.S.
counter-terrorism official said.
"We have been concerned about the heightened threat from Al Qaeda and affiliated
groups such as the IJU, and this particular plot is consistent with that trend
of decentralized command and control in many parts of the world," said the
official, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak
on the record.
German police conducted 41 searches Tuesday and were investigating seven to 10
associates of the jailed suspects. Several of the additional suspects are part
of Germanys large, but mostly moderate, Turkish immigrant population. They
remain under surveillance, though prosecuting them may be difficult under the
terms of Germany's terrorism laws.
The case is stronger against the three in custody because they were allegedly
testing mixtures and assembling bomb components at the time of their arrest,
German officials said. Surveillance revealed that their primary motivation was a
fervent hatred of Americans, whether soldiers or tourists, German and U.S.
officials said.
"In the suspects' minds, they were from days to a couple of weeks away from an
attack," said another law enforcement official who asked to remain anonymous.
"The targets weren't that set, but they wanted to hit soft targets around
military bases where there are large populations of Americans. They wanted to
have coordinated attacks -- the police assessment is three separate attacks,
probably with car bombs."
Although officials did not reveal links between the suspects in Germany and
Denmark, both cases feature stockpiles of bomb-making materials, and suspected
links to Pakistan and Al Qaeda-related figures there. The detainees in Germany
tried to maintain secrecy by communicating through the Internet and, like those
arrested in Denmark, received orders or external communications from the network
in Pakistan, officials said.
"It's remarkable that on the one hand terrorism works with an international
network, but on the other hand it remains in these strictly separated cells,"
said Wolfgang Schaeuble, the German Interior minister. "We don't have any hints
that there is a connection to what happened in Denmark yesterday."
Danish and German police communicated with each other and U.S. counterparts
about the raids, which came a week before the anniversary of the Sept. 11
attacks in the United States, a period believed to be of heightened risk.
Investigators said the fugitive leaders of Al Qaeda have been emboldened by
their ability to operate in Pakistan and set their sights on new targets in
Europe after overseeing half a dozen plots against Britain.
In an ominous development, Al Qaeda appears to be recruiting amid the
multiethnic mix of Muslims in Northern Europe as well as from the predominantly
Pakistani immigrant enclaves of Britain, where militants have formed cells on
their own and then traveled to Pakistan for training and direction. The suspects
here were apparently undeterred by the fact that German and U.S. authorities had
issued several alerts this year warning about an increased risk of attacks on
American targets.
German investigators have been particularly concerned about the flow of
militants back and forth from Germany to Pakistan and Afghanistan during the
last year. As fighting in Afghanistan has heated up, the movement of militants
from Europe to Iraq has decreased while intensifying toward South Asia, where Al
Qaeda's most sophisticated core leadership survives, Western counter-terrorism
officials said.
The German investigation began with a suspect identified as Fritz G., a
28-year-old convert who lives in Ulm. He was questioned and released in January
after he allegedly conducted reconnaissance of two U.S. military barracks near
Hanau, authorities said. He was arrested again Tuesday along with the other two
suspects, whose names were not released. Surveillance early this year allegedly
revealed that the three were trained by the Islamic Jihad Union in Pakistan in
2006 and claimed allegiance to that group.
Between February and August, one of the suspects went to Hanover and amassed
about 1,500 pounds of 35% concentrated hydrogen peroxide solution purchased at a
legitimate company under false pretenses, authorities said.
The chemicals, held in 12 containers, were stored in a rented garage in the
Black Forest region. As suspicions grew, police pulled off a slick trick used in
at least one previous inquiry in Britain. By secretly gaining entry to the
garage, then enlisting the help of the company selling the chemical to the
suspect, investigators switched it for a much weaker mixture of 3% hydrogen
peroxide concentrate, officials said. The suspects obtained other bomb-making
components, including a detonator from a source that remains unclear, perhaps
during their travels to Turkey and Pakistan, officials said. On Aug. 17, one of
the suspects rented a three-bedroom vacation apartment in the 900-resident
village of Oberschledorn, a popular skiing and hiking locale, where the three
met, allegedly to begin making bombs after last Sunday.
Police had planned to wrap up the surveillance and make arrests, probably before
Sept. 11, but a coincidence sped things up. While returning Monday from a trip
to acquire alleged bomb components, the suspects' vehicle was briefly stopped by
traffic police because the high beams were on during the day. Through
"undercover methods," police learned that the incident had made the suspects
nervous and suspicious, said Ziercke, the federal police chief.
"On September 4 at 1:42 p.m., police learned that the group started to put
together a bomb," Ziercke said. "We learned that the group again discussed the
police check and judged it as a danger for the operation's success. The group
wanted to give up the vacation house and rent a new place. At about 2:30 p.m.
the group obviously wanted to leave the building."
A SWAT team swarmed the house, arresting two suspects. The third barricaded
himself in a bathroom, jumped from a window and fled over a back fence, police
said. When officers converged on him, he managed to wrestle away a gun, wounding
an officer in the hand, officials said. The suspect tried to shoot a second
officer, but the gun misfired, Ziercke said. The suspect is likely to face
additional charges in the incident, officials said.
Because of the hurried denouement, questions and ambiguity persist about the
exact targets and details of the plot. Some German and U.S. officials said
Ramstein Air Base and Frankfurt International Airport were specific targets,
while other officials said the objectives were more likely soft targets such as
nearby bars and nightclubs.
The apparent ferocity and dimensions of the alleged plot have erased notions
that Germany is not a terrorist target because it stayed out of the war in Iraq,
observers said. The threat today is fed by the German military role in
Afghanistan, the presence of tens of thousands of Americans at military
installations and Al Qaeda's obsession with striking in the heart of the West.
"We're not dismissing the possibility of follow-on plots, and the Germans are
tracing leads on this. But this particular plot appears to have been disrupted
in rather late stages," the U.S. counter-terrorism official said.
He said German authorities had placed the group of suspects "under a microscope"
for a long period, and that they felt confident they had disrupted the
particular plot and arrested all major participants.
"But we can't discount the possibility that there were other target sites for
these guys," he said. "And we don't discount that there are others out there
planning significant attacks" in Germany and elsewhere in Europe.
Intercepts 'key factor' in German case
A U.S. intelligence tip about messages to and from Pakistan led police to suspects in the alleged car bomb plot, officials say.
By Dirk Laabs, Sebastian Rotella and Josh
Meyer, Special to The Times
September 7, 2007
STUTTGART, GERMANY -- -- A U.S.
intelligence intercept of suspicious communications between Pakistan and
Stuttgart was the initial break that ultimately led to the arrest this week of
three suspected Muslim militants accused of plotting massive car bomb attacks
here against Americans, U.S. and German officials said Thursday.
The communications detected last year referred to apparent terrorist activity,
the German and U.S. officials said in interviews. The German officials
characterized the communications as specific and alarming. All the officials
asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to discuss the case
publicly.
American authorities passed the lead to German police, who
conducted a painstaking investigation that led to the arrests of the three
suspects, two of whom are German converts to Islam. Police here suspected that
militants were communicating with Pakistan from an Internet cafe, a frequent
strategy to avoid detection, but they did not know which one. So they deployed
surveillance teams at several dozen Internet cafes around the city, officials
said.
The stakeouts paid off when police spotted a 28-year-old convert who was already
known as an associate of Islamic militants and has been identified as Fritz
Gelowicz.
Arrested this week with the two other suspects, Gelowicz was described Thursday
by anti-terrorism officials as the lead figure in a group that learned
bomb-making at an Al Qaeda-linked training camp in Pakistan last year. The three
are accused of plotting to kill Americans at or near military bases and airports
in Germany with the equivalent of more than 1,000 pounds of TNT. The third man
jailed is a Turk who has been living in Germany.
On Thursday, police pressed their investigation of at least seven other
suspects, including several who are believed to have left the country.
About 300 investigators worked round-the-clock for nine months to monitor the
alleged plotters. Using sophisticated eavesdropping equipment of their own, the
Germans watched and listened as the suspected cell coalesced and amassed a stash
of bomb-making materials.
When they announced the arrests Wednesday, German authorities said they had
focused on Gelowicz after he was briefly detained in January on suspicion of
scouting a U.S. military barracks. But in reality, Gelowicz and his associates
already had been identified as an urgent threat, thanks to the American
intercepts last year, according to officials in Germany and the U.S.
"The U.S. counter-terrorism community supported efforts to draw links, to do
intercepts and to monitor communications between Pakistan and Germany," a U.S.
counter-terrorism official said.
The counter-terrorism official described the initial intercepts as "a key
factor" that "helped build the case."
"It led to a very long period of surveillance, and the arrests." The official
said the intercepts continued throughout the investigation.
This year, U.S. intelligence agents intercepted a key communication in which
militant handlers in Pakistan asked for an update on the plot and pushed the
suspects to move faster, German officials said.
At the start of the investigation, American intelligence also helped German
police focus on the second convert, Daniel Schneider, a German official said.
U.S. intercepts detected the 22-year-old convert's e-mail communications with
Pakistan and guided German police to him through a wireless signal he was
pirating, officials said.
The suspects were simultaneously stealthy, brazen and reckless, officials said.
The three evidently became aware of the constant surveillance and tried to
thwart it, changing trains and dodging tails. They may also have noticed that
the German and U.S. governments had issued several warnings during the year
about increased terrorism risks, particularly threats posed by militants trained
in Pakistan.
But when police this year confronted Schneider, and warned him that they knew
what he was up to, he brushed them off, a German anti-terrorism official said.
The trio plunged zealously ahead, the official said, apparently eager to die.
The suspects wanted to kill as many Americans as possible in the process,
officials said. Probable targets of their alleged plan to build three car bombs
were crowded bars, nightclubs, restaurants and airports. They chose Germany
because it was their home turf and because of the large population of Americans
around military bases.
"It's not just the military, but Americans in general," said a law enforcement
official who asked not to be identified. "If they could have wiped out 1,000
American tourists, they would have been happy."
The three were unemployed; the two German natives collected welfare. Authorities
said the trio claimed allegiance to the Islamic Jihad Union, an Uzbek group that
in 2002 broke off from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an Al Qaeda ally. The
IJU ran the Pakistani camp where they trained and oversaw their alleged mission,
officials said.
Unlike cases such as the London transportation bombings of 2005, in which the
bombers communicated frequently with masterminds in Pakistan during the final
weeks, the cell here was largely "self-contained and self-directed," the law
enforcement official said. "They seemed to be running their own show."