September 05, 2007

Germans Arrest Three Terror Suspects In Plot Against U.S. Military Base UPDATED/BUMPED

germany_al-qaeda-plot.jpgRight: One of the suspects (left) is taken away by German police. Breaking on the AP wire:

BERLIN - Three men have been arrested for planning attacks on the U.S. military base in Ramstein and Frankfurt's international airport, a German broadcaster reported Wednesday.

Two of the suspects had German citizenship while the third was Pakistani, the Sudwestrundfunk public broadcaster said. It said the men were arrested Tuesday evening and were close to carrying out the attacks.

Nothing to worry about I'm sure. They're just "youths."

UPDATE by Rusty, bane of al Qaeda in Germany, at 08:00: Attack is said to be "imminent" and "massive". Two of the arrested "youths" were German born converts to Islam, 22 & 29. The other is a 29 year old Turkish immigrant--which contradicts the earlier report which said he was Pakistani.

In addition to targeting Ramstein and Frankfurt airport, the group also planned to attack night clubs and bars frequented by Americans. Very reminiscent of the 1980s.

An NPR report said this morning that the three belong to the Uzbeki branch of the global jihad, The Islamic Jihad Group, and to have trained in Pakistan with al Qaeda. The report also claimed that the attack came on direct orders from the al Qaeda leadership.

As Confederate Yankee notes, the hydrogen peroxide base of the bomb most certainly would have been used to construct a TATP bomb. The same kind of bomb used in the London transit bombings. UPDATE: Not so fast, CY thinks that TATP would not have been powerful enough to do the kind of damage the reports are talking about.

UPDATE 08:20: AllahP has a nice history of Islamist plots in Germany and connects many dots. Here are the main points, with a few he missed:

1) Arrests came yesterday, same day as arrests in Denmark. Those plotters also said to be building TATP bomb.

2) On July 31, 2006 suitcase bombs failed to detonate on German trains. Possibly linked to Hizbollah.

3) May 2007, fear of imminent attack. Possibly linked to Ansar al Sunna, an Iraqi terror group with roots in the Kurdish community and which raises money from European Kurds.

4) May 14, Air Marshals alerted to possible threats from Germany.

5) Most important, Newsweek reported that Uzbeki Islamic Jihad Group connection back in July. Meaning that not only has this group been under surveillance for some time, but the press had wind of it before the suspects.

You'd think that they'd kind of suspect they were being watched after the media runs a story about a possible German terror cell with links to a little known jihad group in Uzbekistan. The Newsweek article actually goes so far as to say that "its German network has recently attracted recruits of other nationalities." How many jihadis in Germany could actually fit that profile?

Of course, that assumes that the Newsweek report was picked up in the German media and that the plotters read it. But my guess is that these guys were far more likely to be consuming propaganda put out by the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF), which is run out of Germany, than reading Der Spiegel.

What exactly is the Uzbekistan connection? In 2004 the U.S. and Israeli embassies were bombed in Uzbekistan by "Islamists" of what I presume is the same group. I've also seen pre-9/11 video of Uzbeki Islamists training for jihad within Afghanistan. What many seem not to get in the MSM that there is a loose network of global jihadis, all of which support each other.

This article, linked by Michelle Malkin, says that the three were trained in Pakistan by the Islamic Jihad Union. This NY Times article has the German prosecutor claiming the three had connections to "high ranking al Qaeda members" and the earlier NPR radio story claimed the plot was ordered by al Qaeda leadership.

So, trained by Uzbeki jihadis but on orders from al Qaeda? What this suggests is that the Democratic predisposition to claim that there is a "real" al Qaeda and to seperate this "real" al Qaeda from other Islamist threats is simply not based in reality. We are not at war with al Qaeda, we are at war with a global Islamist movement. That movement has scores of different armed groups, all of which have the same goals as al Qaeda and which have loose connections to it, but few of which actually are the "real" al Qaeda.

UPDATE 08:50: Shots fired during arrest. Also, the three are identified:

Daniel S. from the state of Saarland and Fritz G. from Neu-Ulm in Bavaria, both of whom are German converts to Islam, as well as Adem Y., who is believed to be from Turkey
The report also claims that there were other raids around Germany, meaning that these three may be the tip of the iceberg.

Thanks to Gateway Pundit who has more and the overlords at PJ Media who are doing a roundup.

UPDATE 10:30: Ha, they were on welfare!

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