German Police Arrest 3 in Terrorist Plot - Nytimes.Com

German Police Arrest 3 in Terrorist Plot - NYTimes.com http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/world/europe/06germany.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

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German Police Arrest 3 in Terrorist Plot More Articles in World »

By MARK LANDLER Published: September 6, 2007 Today's Headlines Daily E-Mail TWITTER

This article was reported by Mark Landler, Nicholas Kulish LINKEDIN and Souad Mekhennet, and written by Mr. Landler. SIGN IN TO E-MAIL Sign up for a roundup of the day's top stories, sent every Enlarge This Image FRANKFURT, Sept. 5 — German PRINT

authorities said Wednesday that they REPRINTS

had stopped a major terrorist attack SHARE against American and German targets in this country, arresting three Islamic militants and seizing a large amount of potentially explosive Uli Deck/European Pressphoto Agency chemicals and military-grade detonators. German police officers escorting one of the suspects arrested in connection

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with a terrorist plot. More Photos » Those arrested — two German citizens who had converted to Islam and a Turkish resident of Germany — were in the Multimedia advanced stages of plotting bomb attacks that could have been deadlier than those that killed dozens in London and Madrid, the police and security officials said. At least five lesser figures are still being pursued, they said.

“They were planning massive attacks,” the German federal prosecutor, Monika Harms, said at a news conference, German Police Arrest 3 in Terrorist Plot outlining an intensive six-month investigation. She said the suspects had amassed hydrogen peroxide, the main Back Story With The chemical in the explosives used in the London suicide bombings of July 2005. Times’s Mark Advertise on NYTimes.com Landler (mp3) For months, Germany has been warning of a likely terrorist attack, and the government has been MOST POPULAR contemplating tightening surveillance and enforcement E-MAILED BLOGGED SEARCHED VIEWED

tactics that are now looser than elsewhere in Europe, in 1. Paul Krugman: Mitt’s Gray Areas Timeline: Europe’s part because of Germany’s troubled 20th-century history. 2. Has ‘Organic’ Been Oversized? Moments of Fear 3. Mark Bittman: Got Milk? You Don't Need It Although officials spoke with confidence of the attack’s 4. Genetic Gamble: A New Treatment’s Tantalizing imminence and seriousness, they did not make fully clear Promise Brings Heartbreaking Ups and Downs the basis of their assertions. Europe has been the site of a 5. Well: Relief for Joints Besieged by Arthritis number of devastating terrorist plots, but some have 6. Opinion: Don’t Indulge. Be Happy. turned out later to be less than met the eye when 7. Genetic Gamble : In Treatment for Leukemia, announced. Glimpses of the Future 8. Campaign Stops: The Hollowing Out If the announced details hold up under scrutiny, it means 9. Op-Ed Contributor: Appalachia Turns on Itself that Germany, like Britain, has become a target for 10. Tulelake Journal: At Internment Camp, Exploring sophisticated homegrown terrorism, and the case will fan Choices of the Past

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the debate over the balance between civil liberties and Go to Complete List » Sept. 4, 2007 public security. Previous German plots have been far smaller, masterminded by foreigners, or focused outside of Danish authorities arrested eight men in the Germany, like the 9/11 attacks, which were hatched in Copenhagen area on Hamburg. suspicion of plotting a bomb attack. Investigators An American intelligence official said that the United described the threat as States helped German authorities track the location of two imminent and said the arrests were a result of an of the German suspects by eavesdropping on their Let the bounce-back begin international investigation cellphone conversations as they moved out of training ALSO IN MOVIES » that had lasted several camps in Pakistan. A teenage transformation like no other months. Six suspects were The body politic released after a brief detention. Some of the Ms. Harms also said that the two German converts had suspects had connections to trained in terrorist camps in Pakistan and that the three “high-ranking members of suspects had about 1,500 pounds of hydrogen peroxide, Al Qaeda,” said Jakob Scharf, director of the which they were preparing to move by van when arrested ADVERTISEMENTS Danish intelligence service. in an out-of-the-way village in western Germany on It's Just the Ticket for Everything Theater Tuesday afternoon. Security authorities in Europe have warned for some years that radical converts could pose a keen risk since they blend in easily to mainstream society.

Related The Turkish links in this case also trouble The Lede Blog: A Long Unraveling counterterrorism experts, who note that Germany has Plot in Germany (September 5, generally not had to contend with a radical element in its 2007) large Turkish Muslim minority. An Everyday Substance, Potent When Concentrated (September 6, “This is the first time I’ve seen a Turkish-German 2007) network,” said Guido Steinberg, a researcher at the Enlarge This Image German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin. “And the fact that it is connected to a Turkish

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network in Pakistan is an even bigger problem.”

While the suspects were homegrown, the targets the authorities said they intended to attack were symbols of the enduring American presence in Germany.

Thomas Kienzle/Associated Press Information that surfaced during the investigation, which Joerg Ziercke, the head of Germany's included monitoring phone calls and tracking suspects’ Federal Crime Office, left, and German federal prosecutor Monika movements, led the authorities to conclude that among the Harms at press conference in Karlsruhe Wednesday with hydrogen targets under consideration were the Ramstein Air Base, a peroxide seized from the suspects. crucial transportation hub for the American military, and More Photos > Frankfurt International Airport.

The 12 vats of hydrogen peroxide collected by the suspects, when mixed with other chemicals, could produce a bomb with a force equal to 1,200 pounds of TNT, officials said.

“This would have enabled them to make bombs with more explosive power than the ones used in the London and Madrid bombings,” said Jörg Ziercke, head of the German Federal Crime Office.

Mr. Ziercke said the men belonged to a terrorist group that the police suspected of having close ties to Al Qaeda, though he did not offer evidence of those links. Counterterrorism experts here expressed wariness, noting that in almost every major attack or suspected plot since The New York Times 9/11, the role of Al Qaeda has been raised but rarely More Photos > substantiated. Enlarge This Image Nevertheless, the German defense minister, Franz Josef

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Jung, said on state television, “There was an imminent security threat.” And some officials said the attacks could have come within days, noting that the German Parliament will soon take up a politically fraught debate about extending the deployment of German troops in Afghanistan. Next week is also the sixth anniversary of the

Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters 9/11 attacks. German special forces police officers escorting a suspect from the German German officials were visibly relieved by the arrests — the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe today. More Photos > fruits of an elaborate investigation involving more than 300 people. On Wednesday, police officers raided 41 Enlarge This Image houses and apartments across Germany, seizing computers and other evidence.

But some politicians warned that the danger remained high. “The arrests yesterday are just evidence of how serious the situation here in Germany is,” said Wolfgang Bosbach, a prominent legislator in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party. Wolfgang Ratta/Reuters One of the suspects, left, with German special police officers today. The surveillance was so close that in July, officials said, the More Photos > police managed to swap some of the tanks of hydrogen peroxide the suspects had gathered with tanks of a far lesser concentration.

One of the suspects, whom police sources identified as Fritz Gelowicz, a 28-year-old German born in Munich, was detained in 2005 in a raid in a Muslim neighborhood in Bavaria. He was put under surveillance again in December 2006, after he was seen scouting an American military barracks in Hanau, according to court documents.

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The police are investigating a German-Turkish man, an associate of Mr. Gelowicz’s and also a suspect in the plot, two security officials said. They said he was believed to be in Turkey.

Tuesday’s arrests were made at a vacation home in Oberschledorn, a village of 800 tucked into the hills, 75 miles north of Frankfurt. The suspects had rented the house to store chemicals to make explosives, officials said. They were preparing to leave when the police swooped in.

One of the three men fled and, in a scuffle with a police officer, wrested a pistol from his holster and shot him in the hand before he was subdued, officials said.

A few had seen three young men walking through the village in recent days, but they did not arouse suspicion. Curinna Imuhl, 12, who lives near the rented house, said, “I thought no one was there; the shades were always down.”

On Tuesday, the Danish police arrested eight people in a suspected terrorist plot. The German interior minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, said there was no evidence of a direct link between the plots. Six of those suspects have already been released.

Ms. Harms, the federal prosecutor, said the three suspects arrested Tuesday belonged to a German cell of the Islamic Jihad Union, a radical Sunni group based in Central Asia that split from the extremist Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

While this group has not been linked to terrorist attacks in Europe, it has claimed responsibility for suicide bombings in July 2004 near the United States and Israeli Embassies in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent. The group has called for the overthrow of the secular government in Uzbekistan.

German officials have warned that the country was under threat of a terrorist attack because of Germany’s involvement in Afghanistan. They said they were particularly

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worried by reports of Germans taking part in terrorist training camps in Pakistan and returning to Germany to carry out attacks.

In Berlin, Chancellor Merkel said, “The lesson from this is the danger is not just abstract, it’s real.” The consequences of an attack, she added, would have been “indescribable.”

Mr. Ziercke said the United States aided German authorities. Another security official said the Americans tipped off the Germans to the existence of the Islamic Jihad Union.

President Bush, who is in Australia, was briefed on the arrests, said Gordon D. Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council.

American officials, who have spoken publicly about Al Qaeda’s growing abilities to attack Western targets, say the group in Germany is likely to have ties to Al Qaeda’s operational figures in Pakistan. American spy agencies believe that Qaeda’s leaders have established a haven in Pakistan, where they have set up small compounds to train operatives for attacks on Western targets.

American military officials said the Germans contacted them on Tuesday evening to warn them about the plot. “This was a German-led investigation,” said Lt. Cmdr. Corey Barker, a spokesman for the United States European Command in Stuttgart. “We do appreciate their commitment to safeguarding us against a terrorist attack.”

Ramstein is the largest American air base in Germany and a hub for troops deploying to Eastern Europe, Iraq and Afghanistan. Commander Barker said the base had not lifted its force protection level, which is now at the second highest designation.

Frankfurt’s airport, the second busiest on the Continent, after Charles de Gaulle in Paris, was operating normally, an airport spokesman said.

Germany narrowly missed a smaller terrorist attack in July 2006, when two suitcase

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bombs left on commuter trains in Cologne failed to explode. Officials said the two suspects in that attack, from Lebanon, had a fraction of the bomb-making chemicals amassed for this latest plot.

In June, Mr. Schäuble and his deputy, August Hanning, warned that the terrorist threat was comparable to that in the months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. That plot was hatched in Hamburg by Islamic militants posing as students.

Mr. Schäuble coupled his warning with a call for stricter anti-terrorism measures. He said he would like the police to be able to conduct surreptitious searches of computers belonging to people suspected of being terrorists.

In the past, some critics here have accused Mr. Schäuble of ratcheting up fears of terrorism in order to build support for his measures. But no such criticisms were voiced on Wednesday.

Mark Landler and Souad Mekhennet reported from Frankfurt, and Nicholas Kulish from Berlin. Reporting was contributed by Rhea Wessel from Oberschledorn, Germany, Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt from Washington, and Sheryl Gay Stolberg from Sydney, Australia.