Thanks to Oorang for this post.
Note: The following post is a quote:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1890027/posts?page=1101#1101
Operation Alberich: How the CIA Helped Germany Foil Terror Plot
September 10, 2007
With the help of the CIA, German investigators foiled what would likely have been the most devastating terror attack of its kind in the country’s history. The plans of a fanatical group of Islamists trained in Pakistan reveal just how great a risk Europe faces.
It was early June at the G-8 summit in the German seaside resort of Heiligendamm, and climate protection and hedge funds were the key issues on the agenda. But then there came the moment when the news of a potential terrorist plot reached Chancellor Angela Merkel. Not a word of it was mentioned in the summit’s official communiqués. Merkel and US President George W. Bush met alone to discuss what he called “the Pakistan matter.” America felt threatened, and the threat, US intelligence agents told their president, was coming from Germany — once again, just as it had on Sept. 11, 2001.
Bush, who was well briefed about the plot, even knew the names of the suspects. He made it clear to Merkel that he was taking the matter very seriously. Her officials at the Chancellery were all too familiar with what the US president was talking about. “Operation Alberich,” as the intelligence agencies called the case, had top priority.
For months the operation was discussed almost every Tuesday at a weekly meeting conducted by Merkel’s chief of staff, Thomas de Maizière. What began with vague information soon turned into the biggest police operation since the so-called “German Autumn” of 1977 — a political thriller rarely seen in postwar Germany.
Operation Alberich began last October, when the US National Security Agency, the NSA, began intercepting suspicious emails between Germany and Pakistan. It ended last week in the central German Sauerland region, with the arrests of two German converts to Islam, Fritz Gelowicz, 28, the son of a southern German doctor, and 22-year-old Daniel S., who had learned how to handle weapons during his military service in the western German city of Saarlouis. His neighbors in nearby Saarbrücken had noticed that he prayed to Allah “often and very loudly.” The third man arrested in the sting was Adem Y., a 28-year-old Turkish national. The trio was caught in the act of mixing chemical ingredients to make explosives at a vacation house in the mountainous Sauerland region.
Excerpted
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,504837,00.html
1,101 posted on 09/11/2007 5:41:11 PM PDT by Oorang (Tyranny thrives best where government need not fear the wrath of an armed people - Alex Kozinski)
Thanks to Oorang for this post.
QUOTE:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1890027/posts?page=1170#1170
Austria arrests three with al Qaeda links
Wed 12 Sep 2007
VIENNA - Austria has arrested three people linked to al Qaeda who posted an video message on the Internet threatening attacks against Austria and Germany, Interior Minister Guenther Platter said on Wednesday.
The trio are suspected of producing the video, which demanded German and Austrian soldiers leave Afghanistan, but in electronic surveillance over several months police found no concrete indications that attacks were in the offing, he said. “Austria was not under threat of an attack at any time,” Platter told a news conference. “We could determine that based on the actions of the three.”
The arrests came a week after Germany said it foiled an Islamist militant plan to carry out “massive bomb attacks” on U.S. installations in the country. Germany arrested three men. Platter said he knew of no links between the German and the Austrian suspects, but said the surveillance had produced evidence the Austrians had contacts to al Qaeda.
Excerpted
http://africa.reuters.com/world/news/usnL12801344.html
Jihad Union hard-pressed to explain strange statement
Sep 12, 2007, 2007
Istanbul - The statement claiming reponsibility for planning an attack on the US airbase in Germany’s Ramstein earlier in the week by the Islamic Jihad Union from Uzbekistan is considered to be genuine by German’s Interior Ministry, but the message published on the internet raised more questions than it answered.
Firstly, why would a terrorist organization admit to planning an attack that has already been prevented by the security forces in the planning stages? The court appearances of two German Muslims and a Turk who were arrested on September 5 in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia for plotting attacks in Germany were certainly complicated when the Islamic Jihad Union declared them ‘our brothers.’
Secondly, the internet message said that there would be further attacks against US and Uzbek consulates in Germany. At the same time, the message directed less criticism at the US than at Germany which uses the US airbase for logistical support to German troops in Afghanistan.
Thirdly, the message appeared in Arabic and Turkish. The Arabic was only used for quotations from the Koran, which is no surprise for an Islamist group, but the question remains why the terrorists used flawless Turkish for the message and not the Cyrillic script normally used in Uzbekistan.
Excerpted
1,170 posted on 09/12/2007 1:49:49 PM PDT by Oorang (Tyranny thrives best where government need not fear the wrath of an armed people - Alex Kozinski)