Free Republic

A lawyer says a German convert to Islam who was convicted over a thwarted plan to attack American soldiers and civilians in Germany has been granted early release from prison. Fritz Gelowicz was one of four men arrested in 2007 and convicted in 2010. A Düsseldorf court found that they operated as a cell of the radical Islamic Jihad Union and plotted to attack Americans at facilities including the U.S. Air Force's Ramstein Air Base. …

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...

Note: White Jihadi. # SNIPPET: "The NEFA Foundation has obtained a new video from the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) showing a group of alleged German nationals receiving instruction at an IJU terrorist training camp in northwest Pakistan. The video also includes footage of a balding Caucasian male identified as a U.S. national fighting alongside the IJU, "Abu Ibrahim al-Amriki." The IJU has claimed responsibility for a failed terrorist plot in 2007 targeting airports and other critical infrastructure in Germany - including Ramstein Air Base."

German federal prosecutors said Friday they have arrested a man suspected of helping a terrorist cell that allegedly plotted attacks against U.S. troops in Germany. The U.S. military's Ramstein Air Base is believed to have been one of the targets for plotters. The prosecutor's office identified the man only as "Kadir T.," and said he is a German of Turkish origin. He is suspected of acquiring a video camera and night-vision equipment for the Islamic Jihad Union group, prosecutors said. The items were allegedly shipped to Waziristan in Pakistan, prosecutors said. Four men trained by the Islamic Jihad Union are...

The body of a male adolescent was found Sunday night in the wheel-well of a U.S. Air Force C-130 at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany after the plane had arrived from a flight that originated in Mali... The aircraft had made one other stop in Africa and another in Sigonella, Italy, before arriving at Ramstein, Kirby said. It's unclear whether this child was a stowaway or where the child had boarded the plane.

Despite the end of the Cold War, and the dismantling of over 25,000 nuclear weapons, NATO still maintains a stock of nuclear bombs in Europe. These are American weapons, to be used by NATO allies with U.S. permission. They are not covered by START (the strategic nuclear disarmament treaty) because they are not strategic, they are local, or "theater" weapons. NATO would like to negotiate a disarmament treaty to cover such non-strategic nukes, but to get the Russians to do that, it helps if there are some nukes under NATO control. Like with START, a treaty covering non-strategic weapons would...

6/23/2010 - POWIDZ AIR BASE, Poland (AFNS) -- Officials from the 86th Airlift Wing formalized their partnership with their Polish sister wing, the 3rd Airlift Wing, during a ceremony here June 21. Along with members of the Polish Air Force, Airmen from the 86th AW and 435th Air Ground Operations Wing from Ramstein Air Base, Germany, attended the signing of the letter of intention by Brig. Gen. Mark Dillon, the 86th Airlift Wing commander and Polish air force Brig. Gen. Tadeusz Mikutel, the 3rd AW commander. "I want to thank General Mikutel for his leadership, vision and hospitality as we...

Two Muslim converts and two Turks go on trial in a bomb-proof courtroom in Düsseldorf today accused of plotting to blow up German civilians and US soldiers. “The world will burn!” boasted an intercepted e-mail sent between the accused, who are alleged to have wanted to wage an Islamic holy war in the heart of Europe. Three of the men — Fritz Gelowicz, 29, Daniel Schneider, 23 and the Turkish national Adem Yilmaz, 30 — are accused of attending a training camp on the Afghan-Pakistani frontier run by an Uzbek-based terror organisation known as the Islamic Jihad Union. Intelligence services...

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 (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,...

As Washington postures in anticipation of next week’s report from Gen. David Petraeus, we are again reminded — this time by events in Germany — of the enemy’s nature and the wages of defeat. German authorities have arrested three Islamic terrorists, and are looking for at least ten others, in connection with a plot to strike multiple targets — most prominently, Ramstein Air Base and Frankfurt International Airport, critical hubs for American military operations and civilian travel, respectively