Posted on 09/08/2007 6:03:51 PM PDT by knighthawk
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 up in Ulm.
Gelowicz was not an immigrant. He was born into a middle-class family in Munich -- his mother was a doctor and his father a businessman -- and the family moved to Ulm when he was five.
Most recently, he was studying social sciences and lived in a small, well-maintained flat in a leafy area of the town, just a few steps from a children's creche.
Willi Boehmer, a journalist for the local Suedwestpresse newspaper, learned from speaking to friends and relatives of Gelowicz that he converted to Islam when he was a teenager and asked his friends to call him Abdullah.
"It's not clear why he converted but he said that he had been at school with a lot of Turkish children," Boehmer said.
In January, he married a German woman of Turkish origin whom he met in a mosque. Last year, he went abroad for several weeks on the pretext of making a trip to Syria to learn Arabic but had in fact went to a training camp in Pakistan, Boehmer said.
Investigators refused to confirm the details, saying only that Gelowicz was a regular visitor to an Islamic centre in Ulm, housed in a tiny office in a quiet road in the town centre.
The office of the Islamic Information Centre (IIZ) remained firmly closed on Thursday, but a sticker on the door said: "Islam is peace".
"For a long time now, we have been watching this group, which practises a radical form of Wahhabism," said a spokesman for the domestic intelligence services of the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg.
"Under the cover of religion, the IIZ promotes a potentially dangerous message: on one side devout Muslims, and on the other infidels, who are bad people and to be hated," the spokesman said.
Another Islamic centre on the other side of the Danube, in Ulm's sister town of Neu-Ulm, was closed two years ago after it was linked with extremist attacks.
One visitor to the centre, known as the Multi-Cultural House, was Seyam Reda, a German of Egyptian descent once suspected of links to Al-Qaeda and of taking part in the bombings on the Indonesian island of Bali which killed 202 people in 2002.
Khaled el-Masri, a Lebanese-born German who says he was seized by the CIA in Macedonia and tortured in Afghanistan, also used to pray at the centre.
In 2005, the regional authorities closed the centre because it "preached a message of hate against parliamentary democracy, non-Muslims and Israel".
But officials believe many of its followers simply switched allegiance to the centre in Ulm attended by Fritz Gelowicz.
"Some of them come and pray with us on Fridays," said Timur Nur, 18, sitting at a cafe at a mosque in Ulm.
"We know them just to say hello. None of them had ever seemed suspect to me. I know the IIZ too. I go there to buy perfume made in Saudi Arabia because it doesn't contain any alcohol."
The days of the centre in Ulm also seem numbered. As prosecutors were announcing on Wednesday that they had foiled the bombing plot, the centre was raided.
"I hope that will be enough for us to get permission to shut down the centre," said Heribert Rech, the interior minister of Baden-Wuerttemberg.
Ping
Well, of course... We constantly hear that “not all Muslims are terrorists. There are many good people among them.”
But for some reason, every time a terrorist is caught, the neighbors swear that he was one of the good ones.
The greatest lie ever told.
Good on the Germans for catching this guy and his pals before anything happened.
What? How far did you imagine it would go?
And where did you imagine that it would stop?
Note that I wrote imagine and not think.
Clearly, no one there did any thinking. - just imagining, and that seems to be the common substitute for thought these days.
I am shocked, I tell ya! Could have knocked me over with an IED.
Which goes to show that there’s no such thing as a moderate muslim.
People are crazy if they really think islam takes anything less than first place in these people’s lives. It’s their first and foremost loyalty.
I don’t understand why the germans are shocked. Germans were members of the Baader-Meinhof gang, the Red Army Faction, and other radical cells. They killed Americans then. These same radicals sympathized with the PLO, Black September, etc., and assisted in hijacking airplanes, bombings, transportation, logding, logistics, etc.
Some of those who belonged to these terrorist organizations are in German politics now and have served in the government.
There are obviously german sympathizers and enablers if the jihadis have been operating in germany for so long.
Crickey! Islam is more contagious than the flu! It even infects caucasians.....
“Which goes to show that there’s no such thing as a moderate muslim.”
I’ve been saying this for years. People think its a radical statement, but muslims themselves back me up on it every day with a nonstop death parade.
“Everyone here knew that there was an Islamist centre in Ulm, but people are in shock. Noone imagined that it would go this far,”
What? How far did you imagine it would go?
And where did you imagine that it would stop?
Note that I wrote imagine and not think.
Clearly, no one there did any thinking. - just imagining, and that seems to be the common substitute for thought these days.”
Welcoem to the jungle Germaniers...
And this idea that the ringleader’s name was “Fran” is one more example of the Death Wish of the West, he changed his name when he converted, let’s hear what his “new” name is once he was safely ensconced in the “Religion of Peace”..
Was it Aduul? Mohammed? Salaam? What was this man’s self called name?
I’m surprised that folks on FR let the fact that the news article didn’t name him by his “new” name, like Jose Padilla, he had a muslim name, but you never hear it now do you?
-Traveler
Ivo, you ain't seen nothing yet.
bttt
But...but...he was such a nice boy, never got into trouble.... /s
Baader-Meinhof in beards and robes.
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.Let me get this straight. The residents knew there was a local group of Islamic extremists and yet were surprised to learn one ended up involved in a bomb plot.
Is 'Ulm' German for 'moron'?
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