BERLIN: The head of Germany's intelligence agency said that "several hundred" Muslim extremists are living in Germany and that al-Qaida is forming a strong base in North Africa, a German magazine reported on Monday.
Ernst Uhrlau, who oversees the BND, the Germany intelligence agency, said that "up to 700 people are being surveilled, in different degrees," according to an interview with Der Spiegel. He was also quoted by the magazine as saying that "more than a dozen" of those people had made trips to Pakistan and Afghanistan to try to make contact with Islamic extremist groups operating there.
"Converts that end up in extremist groups often tend toward political renegades and absolute intolerance and highest radicalism," Uhrlau was quoted as saying by the magazine for its special edition on Islam in Europe.
Excerpted
U.S. releases transcripts of Fort Dix plotters
Tue, Mar. 25, 2008
Agron Abdullahu, who once faced trial alongside the five men charged in May with plotting a paramilitary attack on Fort Dix, could get less than two years in prison at his sentencing next week. The Kosovo refugee was never accused of being a part of the others' alleged plan to kill U.S. soldiers. Instead, he pleaded guilty last year to what his attorney called a "fairly technical" gun charge of supplying guns to illegal aliens.
But federal prosecutors said yesterday that Abdullahu, 25, deserves a far longer sentence for threatening national security by giving guns to people "who expressed their devotion to jihad." To bolster their arguments, prosecutors made public for the first time more than 75 pages of conversations secretly recorded by one of two FBI informants who infiltrated the group.
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http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/nj/20080325_U_S__releases_transcripts_of_Fort_Dix_plotters.html
http://news.trendaz.com/index.shtml?show=news&newsid=1163903&lang=EN
German official warns of increased terror threat in Europe
29.03.08 04:01 (snipped)
( dpa ) - A top German state official, Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann, warned Friday of an increased danger of terrorist attacks in Europe.
“The al-Qaeda messages of recent weeks speak a clear language,” the minister told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa at the end of a visit in the United States.
Hermann met with US security officials to work out agreements on improved exchange of information. As home to the largest footprint of US military in Germany, Bavaria has a particularly large number of targets at risk, he said.
Hermann met with officials of the national police force, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); the CIA; the US State Department; and the Pentagon.
It became clear during the meetings, Hermann said, that the risks of attacks in Europe are currently higher than in the US.
“One must simply assume that there’s a whole group of people in Europe who are prepared to carry out attacks,” he said. . .