Free Republic

A new study commissioned by Germany's Interior Ministry warns of a growing threat from the radicalization of Muslims in the country. Six percent of Muslims in Germany support violence in the name of Islam, the authors write. A new study released by Germany's Interior Ministry has added new fuel to the debate about integration of Muslims in Germany, with the report warning about the danger of radicalization of Muslims. According to the study, which was published Tuesday, around 40 percent of Muslims surveyed had a "fundamentalist orientation," which the authors defined as a strongly religious worldview and moral values.

A KEY suspect in the alleged plot to mount an attack in Germany on the scale of 9/11 is on the run in Britain, German security officials disclosed yesterday. Scotland Yard counterterrorism detectives are hunting the man, who escaped from Germany after a plot to explode bombs at Frankfurt airport and a US airbase. The collective power of the bombs would have exceeded those in Madrid and London in 2004 and 2005. The plot was foiled on September 4 when three men were arrested at a rented holiday apartment near the central German town of Kassel. Police recovered chemicals and...

The US director of intelligence has said wiretaps played a significant role in stopping bomb attacks by suspected Islamists in Germany last week. Michael McConnell told a Senate committee eavesdropping had revealed that the suspects had obtained explosive liquids. He said Congress should not restrict the programme. In August, a temporary bill was adopted allowing eavesdropping on foreign terror suspects without a warrant. Controversial programme Mr McConnell said the surveillance programme had made "significant contributions" in discovering and breaking up a suspected plot in Germany to bomb US installations. "It allowed us to see and understand all the connections to...

BERLIN (Reuters) - Three suspected Islamist militants who were planning to attack American targets in Germany had orders to act by Sept. 15 and knew police were hot on their trail before their arrest, a magazine said on Saturday. The plan was foiled on Tuesday when police arrested two German converts to Islam and a Turk in the biggest German police investigation in the last 30 years. According to surveillance details published in Der Spiegel magazine, the men had been given a two-week deadline for their planned strikes in a late August call from northern Pakistan that was monitored by...

GERMAN police questioning “Fritz the Taliban”, a 28-year-old Munich-born terror suspect, revealed yesterday that they are hunting up to 49 Islamist plotters over a conspiracy to use truck bombs to blow up air-ports, bars and discos. The arrest of Fritz Gelowicz as one of the plot’s alleged ringleaders has shocked Germans. It emerged this weekend that he was raised in a middle-class family in largely Roman Catholic Bavaria before converting to Islam at the age of 18 and changing his name to Abdullah following the break-up of his parents’ marriage. “Fritzi” was remembered by neighbours as a “little blond boy”...

Der Spiegel has interesting information about the terror bust in Germany; as usual, however, you have to read between the lines: Three suspected Islamist militants who were planning to attack U.S. installations in Germany had orders to act by Sept. 15....According to surveillance details published in Der Spiegel magazine, the men had been given a two-week deadline for their planned strikes in a late August call from northern Pakistan that was monitored by German police. So al Qaeda's top leaders were anxious to precipitate an attack on Americans by September 15. Why? That's the date on which General Petraeus will...

BERLIN — After thwarting what might have become a "massive" attack on American installations, German authorities will review ways to fight homegrown terrorists, including a proposal to allow Internet spying on all German converts to Islam. The search for seven other suspected members of a German cell of the Pakistan-based Islamic Jihad Union continued into Thursday night, with investigators saying only that they knew who they were seeking. Anti-terror police arrested three men in a village in central Germany Tuesday, outside a vacation cabin where they were suspected of building a bomb. Germans were shocked to learn that two of...

Ulm (AFP) - The quiet town of Ulm is well-known in Germany as home to a group of Islamic extremists but its residents never imagined it could produce the presumed ringleader of a plot to bomb US targets. "Everyone here knew that there was an Islamist centre in Ulm, but people are in shock. Noone imagined that it would go this far," Ivo Goenner, mayor of the town of 120,000 people on the banks of the river Danube told AFP. Fritz Gelowicz, 28, was the suspected leader of a three-man extremist cell planning to bomb US citizens in Germany, grew...

US tip-off foiled German bomb plot, reports say Jess Smee in Berlin<>br Saturday September 8, 2007 The Guardian (UK) A tip-off from US intelligence helped to foil the terror bomb plot in Germany, it emerged yesterday. "The first piece of hard evidence on the bomb plot against American military and airbases in Germany was transmitted to the German authorities from American intelligence officials," Rolf Tophoven, director of the German institute for terrorist research and security policy, said. US satellite systems picked up on electronic contact between Pakistan and Germany more than 10 months ago, he said. "From then on, the...

BERLIN — Three militant Islamic terror suspects had acquired vans that might have been intended for use in bomb attacks on U.S. and other targets in Germany, a spokeswoman for prosecutors said Saturday. Estimates of the size of the plot ranged as high as 50 people, and prosecutors were looking the possibility of a wider terrorist network. German authorities think the two German converts and a Turk arrested Tuesday were only the leading tip of the planning, said Petra Kneuer, spokeswoman for the Federal Prosecutor's Office. She said authorities were investigating seven more suspects inside and outside Germany as part...

BERLIN (Reuters) - Three suspected Islamist militants who were planning to attack American targets in Germany had orders to act by September 15 and knew police were hot on their trail before their arrest, a magazine said on Saturday. The plan was foiled on Tuesday when police arrested two German converts to Islam and a Turk in the biggest German police investigation in the last 30 years. According to surveillance details published in Der Spiegel magazine, the men had been given a two-week deadline for their planned strikes in a late August call from northern Pakistan that was monitored by...

The prime suspect in the alleged German terror plot to blow up hundreds of people may have had contact with Mohammed Atta, the suicide pilot who smashed a hijacked plane into the Twin Towers. German police reports are vague about the encounter, but it has helped investigators to trace Fritz Gelowicz’s path from average Bavarian schoolboy to Islamic radical. His case has also highlighted the curious and sinister role of Neu-Ulm — a small township in the Roman Catholic heart of southern Germany — as a cradle of Islamic extremism. The connection between Gelowicz, 28, who was arrested this week,...

German police were today searching for around 10 more members of a terror cell suspected of plotting major bomb attacks, after the arrest of three men and the seizure of explosives materials. Officials have said the three men already in custody - two German converts to Islam and a Turkish national - were planning attacks which could have proved more deadly than those in London or Madrid, with possible targets including US military bases, discos, pubs and Frankfurt's international airport. August Hanning, a senior interior ministry official who formerly headed Germany's foreign intelligence service (BND), said today that police were...

UK link to terrorists planning new 9/11 massacre 05.09.07 Islamic terrorists planning a massacre in Germany on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks phoned British contacts as they plotted, it has emerged. They planned to strike at German airports and US bases exactly six years after hijacked planes ploughed into the World Trade Centre. The three suspects, two German converts to Islam and a Turk who had undergone military training at Taliban camps in Pakistan, were caught with 750kg of hydrogen peroxide, a chemical easily transformed into explosives. Several calls to British numbers are said to been made from...

Three men have been arrested for planning attacks on Frankfurt's international airport and the U.S. military base in Ramstein, the German Defense Minister said Wednesday. "There was an imminent threat," Franz Josef Jung told Germany's ARD broadcaster. He declined to elaborate. Two of the suspects had German citizenship while the third was Pakistani, Germany's Sudwestrundfunk public broadcaster said. German federal prosecutors said they had arrested three suspected members of "an Islamic motivated terrorist organization." It was not immediately clear whether the three were suspected of having links to al Qaeda. Sudwestrundfunk said the men were arrested Tuesday evening and were...

Police have smashed a suspected al Qaeda terror cell nursing a "profound hatred of US citizens" plotting to bomb civilian and military jets. The force of the planned explosions would have been worse than the train bombings in Madrid and the Tube and bus attacks in London on 7 July, 2005, according to German security sources. Those attacks killed 191 and 52 people respectively. Three men aged 22, 28 and 29 have been arrested in Germany days before they planned to strike, and bomb-making equipment and explosives have been seized. The arrests come a day after Danish police conducted raids...

BERLIN - German officials on Friday defended a proposal to use "Trojan horse" software to secretly monitor potential terror suspects' hard drives, amid fierce debate over whether the measures violate civil liberties. Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble wants to include the measure in a broader security law being considered by conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government. Carried in e-mails that appear to come from other government offices, the software would allow authorities to investigate suspects' Internet use and the data stored on their hard drives without their knowledge. Use of the government-produced technology for spying on terror suspects "will cover a...

BERLIN - A man accused of raising money for al-Qaida in Iraq and helping to supply foreign fighters for the insurgency there went on trial Wednesday in the northern city of Schleswig. The 37-year-old man — identified only as Redouane E.H. in court documents_ holds German and Moroccan citizenship and lived in the northern city of Kiel. He was arrested in Hamburg in July 2006. Prosecutors said he made four money transfers worth a total of $6,800 to Egypt and Syria between August 2005 and July 2006. The funds, they said, were destined to supply equipment for "holy warriors," cover...

For years, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has been trying to jack up German domestic security in the face of a growing terror threat to the country. These days, the rest of the country seem to be listening. Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has divided Germany with his suggestions on how to deal with terrorism. The discussion on how best to combat the danger of terror attacks in Germany has almost reached the status of a ritual: Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble calls for security forces to be granted greater leeway in investigating and going after suspected terrorists; the opposition cries foul and...

BERLIN (Reuters) - German authorities called on Friday for increased vigilance against possible terror attacks and said the kind of threat detected before the September 11, 2001 suicide hijackings in the United States had resurfaced. Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said the threat was "serious" and suicide attacks were possible on German soil. The present situation recalled the summer of 2001 "when obscure threats surfaced which, as we know, became reality", said Deputy Interior Minister August Hanning. "We are seeing evidence that some action is planned in (the Afghanistan and Pakistan region) but also further afield, in Europe and in the...