Cyprus-Forum.com

[Lit]

Islamics in German bombing plot confess

http://www.macaudailytimesnews.com/inde ... &Itemid=33

Tuesday, 11 August 2009

Four alleged Islamic militants accused of plotting devastating bombings against US interests in Germany have made full confessions to authorities, prosecutors in Duesseldorf said yesterday.

The three German nationals and a Turk have spent the past weeks detailing their plans to agents from the Federal Crime Office after a shock announcement in court on June 9 that they would plead guilty to the charges against them.

The four defendants, who could face 15 years in prison if convicted, aim to shorten what was expected to be a mammoth trial and reduce their sentences by confessing, defence attorneys said.

"The accused confirmed that they intended to kill as many American soldiers as possible here," federal prosecutor Volker Brinkmann told reporters before the trial resumed in Duesseldorf, after a two-month recess.

He added that the four had made "very comprehensive statements".
The accused were to tell the court of their alleged bid to mount at least three bombings against US military installations and American citizens in Germany.

Prosecutors say the group, known as the Sauerland cell after the region where they were captured in September 2007, aspired to carry out attacks on the same scale as those of September 11, 2001 on the United States which killed more than 3,000 people.

After months of surveillance, police using US and German intelligence said they caught three of the suspects red-handed, mixing chemicals to make the equivalent of 410 kilogrammes (900 pounds) of explosives – 100 times the amount used in the 2005 London bombings that killed more than 50 people.

Two of the suspects, Fritz Gelowicz, 29, and Daniel Schneider, 23, are German converts to Islam, a third is a German citizen of Turkish origin, Attila Selek, 24, and the fourth a Turkish national, Adem Yilmaz, 30.
They have been charged with belonging to a terrorist organisation – the Islamic Jihadic Union in Pakistan, an extremist group linked to Al-Qaeda – and conspiring to stage attacks with explosives.

The trial was expected to be one of the lengthiest and costliest on a militant plot in Germany since urban guerrillas from the Red Army Faction faced court in the 1970s.

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MIT ties with terrorist suspects arrested in Germany
Istanbul Vatan Online (03.08.09) reports the following:

“Fresh allegations have emerged concerning ties between the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) and four suspects, two of them Turks, caught while making preparations to carry out bombing attacks in US facilities in Germany two years ago. One of the Turkish suspects, Atilla Selek, mentioned a person named Mevlut K in his 1,100-page statement adding that this person was MIT's "mole." According to the news in the German press no arrest warrant has been issued for Mevlut K because of the possibility of diplomatic problems with Turkey.

According to the respected "Der Spiegel" periodical, Germany asked Turkey to look into this matter and report its findings. According to the periodical, which writes that a reply to this request was sent, MIT confirmed that Mevlut K worked as a "link man" on behalf of Turkish intelligence until 2002. However, MIT emphasized that at the time he was procuring explosives to be used in an attack Mevlut K had no ties whatsoever to MIT.”