Germany's wake-up call
TheStar.com - Unassigned - Germany's wake-up call
Alleged plot indicates country isn't immune to militant attacks despite opposition to Iraq war
September 06, 2007
Mark Trevelyan
Reuters News Agency
Germans who believe their country's opposition to the Iraq war would spare it from terrorist attacks have suffered a major shock.
News of an alleged plot to carry out "massive bomb attacks" against U.S.-linked targets in Germany followed months of stern warnings from authorities that the country faced a grave threat, including possible suicide attacks.
Three militants from an Islamic group linked to Al Qaeda were planning "imminent" bomb attacks against Americans in Germany when an elite anti-terrorist unit raided their small-town hideout after months of intense surveillance, officials said yesterday.
The men – two German converts to Islam and a Turkish citizen who prosecutors said shared a "profound hatred of U.S. citizens" – allegedly obtained military-style detonators and enough chemicals to make bombs more powerful than those that killed 191 commuters in Madrid in 2004 and 52 in London in 2005.
Frankfurt International Airport and the nearby U.S. Ramstein Air Base reportedly were said to be the suspects' primary targets.
Officials, long aware Germany's troop presence in Afghanistan could make it a target, had become increasingly concerned in the past year about the training of German nationals at Al Qaeda camps in Pakistan.
If anything, security analysts said, the surprise was that the alleged plot was directed not primarily at Germans but against Americans on German soil.
Suspects allegedly scouted sites such as discos, pubs and airports frequented by Americans.
"Germany is in Afghanistan and it is a weak coalition partner," said Peter Neumann, a German national and director of the Centre for Defence Studies at King's College, London.
"If you carried out a massive terrorist attack in Germany, probably this would alter the (public) attitude toward Germany's engagement in Afghanistan very significantly. Some of the Taliban leaders have argued along these lines and that's why I believe Germany is very much in the front line now."
Germany has "moved up the ladder," becoming a more attractive target as the focus of the international jihadist movement has increasingly shifted to Afghanistan, Neumann said, where NATO forces – including 2,500 Canadian soldiers – are facing a resurgent Taliban.
Security analysts said there seemed to be significant Pakistani links to the alleged German plot, with all three arrested suspects reported to have trained in militant camps there. They were also intrigued by the German federal prosecutor's statement that the three were members of the Islamic Jihad Union, an obscure group with roots in Uzbekistan that has not previously featured on Europe's militant landscape.
"It could be a little bit of a change of pattern compared to the last couple of years where there were really homegrown, amateuristic, autonomous groups," said Edwin Bakker of the Clingendael Institute, a Dutch think-tank.
Several alleged militant Islamist plots in Britain have featured members of its large ethnic Pakistani community who travelled to their ancestral homeland for Al Qaeda training.
But the Pakistan link is newer to Germany, which has no such demographic ties to South Asia. Alleged plots foiled by Germany in recent years often involved ties to Iraq.
Two of the three men arrested in Germany were German nationals who converted to Islam, in line with a trend also observed elsewhere.
Bakker, who has conducted a study of the backgrounds of militant Islamists convicted or accused of planning attacks in Europe, said about 5 per cent were converts.
The German arrests on Tuesday coincided with a major counter-terrorism operation in neighbouring Denmark in which eight people suspected of Al Qaeda links were held. Two were later remanded in custody and six released.
Although apparently unconnected, the cases highlight the diverse militant threat across the European Union, which has not got around to appointing a new anti-terrorism co-ordinator since Dutchman Gijs de Vries stepped down in March.
Prosecutors said the three – identified only as Fritz Martin G., 28; Adem Y., 28; and Daniel Martin S., 21 – first came to the attention of police when one or more of them carried out surveillance of U.S. military facilities in Hanau, near Frankfurt, in late 2006.
Officials said that during the first part of this year, the men acquired 12 containers of 35 per cent hydrogen peroxide solution, which can be combined with other material to make explosives – as did the four London suicide bombers who blew up three subway cars and a bus on July 7, 2005.
In diluted form hydrogen peroxide is commonly used in hair colouring and as a disinfectant, but the more than 680 kilograms obtained by the suspects could have made a bomb with the explosive power of some 550 kilograms of dynamite, officials said.
In a sign of the intense surveillance involving 300 police officers, prosecutors said that at one point police were able to replace the dangerous peroxide in the containers with a harmless solution without the knowledge of the suspects.
The containers were first kept in a garage in the Black Forest region in southern Germany. Then on Aug. 17, one of the three rented a cottage in Oberschledorn under a false name, and was joined there by the other two suspects Sunday, officials said.
Police decided to move in when the suspects transported one of the peroxide containers to the cottage, where they also had taken detonators and electrical components.
Officials seized computers and were trying to determine if anyone else was involved in their activities.
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