Police Arrest 3 in German Terror Plot Militants’ Targets Are Said to Include Airport and U.S. Military Base

By Mark Landler and Nicholas Kulish

The police in Germany have arrested three Islamic militants suspected of planning large-scale terrorist attacks against several sites frequented by Americans, including discos, bars, airports and military installations. The suspects – two German citizens and a Turkish resident of Germany – were in advanced stages of plotting bombing attacks that could have been deadlier than the terrorist strikes that killed dozens in London and Madrid, the police and security officials said Wednesday. They said the possible targets included the busy Ramstein Air Base and the Frankfurt international airport.

“They were planning massive attacks,” the German federal prosecutor, Monika Harms, said at a news conference, outlining a vast six-month investigation. She said that the suspects had amassed huge amounts of hydrogen peroxide, the main chemical used to manufacture the explosives used in the suicide bombings in London in July 2005.

Harms said the two German suspects were converts to Islam who had trained in terrorist camps in Pakistan. They had 1,500 pounds, or 680 kilograms, of hydrogen peroxide to make explosives, which they had hidden and were preparing to move when they were arrested Tuesday afternoon. Officials said that they also had military-grade detonators. German and American officials said that such indicators made them suspect connections to Al Qaeda.

“This would have enabled them to make bombs with more explosive power than the ones used in the London and Madrid bombings,” said Jorg Ziercke, head of the German Federal Crime Office, calling the links to Al Qaeda “close.” German officials were visibly relieved by the arrests, which they said were the fruits of a six-month investigation involving 300 people from the police and prosecutor’s office. On Wednesday, police officers raided 41 houses and apartments across Germany, seizing computers and other evidence.

One of the suspects, Fritz Gelowicz, a 28-year-old German born in Munich, was under surveillance by German investigators as early as December 2006, after he was seen scouting American military barracks in Hanau as a possible bombing target, according to court documents.

The arrests were made at a vacation home in Oberschledorn, a remote village of 900 people in North Rhine-Westphalia, north of Frankfurt. The suspects had rented the house to store chemicals to make explosives, officials said, and were preparing to leave when security forces swooped in.

One of the three men fled and, in a scuffle with a police officer, wrested a pistol from the officer’s holster and shot him in the hand before being subdued. The officer was slightly wounded, officials said. Residents described the raid, by an elite police unit, as resembling something out of an action movie.

The arrests came a day after the Danish police arrested eight people in a suspected terrorist plot there. The German interior minister, Wolfgang Schauble, said there was no evidence of a direct link between the plots, despite similarities, including a suspected link to Al Qaeda. Six of the suspects in the Danish incident have already been released.

Germans officials said the attacks could have come within days, noting that the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks falls next week and that the German Parliament will soon take up a politically sensitive debate about extending the deployment of German troops in Afghanistan.

“There was an imminent security threat,” the German defense minister, Franz Josef Jung, said on state television.

Harms said the three suspects arrested Tuesday belonged to a German cell of the Islamic Jihad Union, a radical Sunni group based in Central Asia that split from the extremist Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

While this group has not been linked to terrorist attacks in Europe, it has claimed responsibility for suicide bombings in July 2004 near the U.S. and Israeli embassies in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent. The group has called for the overthrow of the secular government in Uzbekistan.

For months, German officials have warned that the country was under threat of a terrorist attack, in part because of Germany’s involvement in Afghanistan. Officials said they were particularly worried about reports that Germans had taken part in terrorist training camps in Pakistan, near the Afghan border.

“The modus operandi looks pretty much like the one we had warnings about,” said an official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“The lesson from this is, the danger is not just abstract, it’s real,” Chancellor Angela Merkel said to reporters in Berlin. The consequences of an attack, she said, would have been “indescribable.” Ziercke said the United States had aided the German authorities in the investigation. Another security official said the Americans had tipped off the Germans to the existence of the Islamic Jihad Union.

President George W. Bush, who is in Australia, was briefed on the arrests, according to Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council. “He’s pleased a potential attack was thwarted and appreciates the work of the German authorities and the cooperation by international law enforcement,” Johndroe said.

An American intelligence official said Wednesday that suspicions that the cell might be plotting an attack in Germany had led the American Embassy in Berlin to issue a warning this year.

Twice this spring the U.S. Embassy in Berlin warned Americans in Germany of the need for heightened security. On March 16, a “warden message” to Americans said that “the U.S. Embassy encourages American citizens resident in and visiting Germany to maintain a high level of vigilance and take appropriate steps to bolster their personal security.” On April 20, in another warden message, the embassy said that American diplomatic facilities in Germany were increasing their “security posture.”

“We are taking these steps in response to a heightened threat situation,” the April 20 message said, again without providing details. It again encouraged Americans in Germany to increase their vigilance and ensure their personal security.

American officials, who have spoken publicly about Al Qaeda’s growing abilities to attack Western targets, also say that the group in Germany probably has ties to Qaeda operations figures in Pakistan. American spy agencies believe that Qaeda leaders have established a haven in the western mountains of Pakistan, where they have set up small compounds to train operatives for attacks on Western targets.

American military officials in Germany said the Germans had warned them of the plot Tuesday evening. They did not have further information about a threat to Ramstein Air Base.

“This was a German-led investigation,” said Lieutenant Commander Corey Barker, a spokesman for the U.S. European Command in Stuttgart. “We do appreciate their commitment to safeguarding us against a terrorist attack.” Ramstein is the largest American air base in Germany and a transportation hub for troops deploying to Eastern Europe, Iraq and Afghanistan. Barker said the base had not lifted its force protection level, which is at B, the second- highest designation.

The Frankfurt airport, the second busiest in Continental Europe after Charles de Gaulle in Paris, was operating normally Wednesday morning, a spokesman for the airport said.

A spokesman for the American Embassy in Berlin, Robert Wood, said the State Department had not decided whether to issue a new warning.

Originally published by The New York Times Media Group.

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