From Europe News:
Homegrown Terror Takes on New Dimensions
Spiegel Online 10 May 2011
By Marcel Rosenbach and Holger Stark
Osama bin Laden may be dead, but al-Qaida is alive and well in Germany. Each month, an average of five Islamists leave the country for terrorist training camps in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area. Recent arrests in Düsseldorf show just how dangerous homegrown terror has become.
It isn't easy being a militant Islamist, as Abdeladim el-K. and Jamil S. learned on a Tuesday two weeks ago. The two men were sitting in a two-room apartment on Witzelstrasse in the German city of Düsseldorf, complaining to each other about how complicated it is to build a functioning bomb. "Bomb is not so difficult as detonator," said Abdeladim el-K., "because detonator more dangerous than bomb."
The al-Qaida handbooks make it all sound so easy. You buy charcoal lighters and extract the hexamine, and already you have a component for a bomb. Apparently the method works everywhere, except possibly in Germany, where charcoal lighters have a different chemical composition than in other countries. In Düsseldorf, investigators would later discover a cooking pot the two men may have wanted to use to boil down the lighters.
The apartment was under surveillance, as were the men's phones and computers. The police had been listening in on the two men's conversations for weeks, except when the sound of the television or the washing machine drowned out what they were saying. On Wednesday, when the men, speaking in broken German, began discussing "making an attack at bus stop" or possibly on a bus, the federal prosecutor's office decided to move in rather than wait until the would-be terrorists had built their bomb and were ready to use it.
On the morning of Friday, April 29, police arrested Moroccan national Abdeladim el-K., 29, German-Moroccan electrician Jamil S., 31 and German-Iranian student Amid C., 19, who was on the verge of taking his final examinations prior to graduating from high school.
At the center of the investigation in Düsseldorf was Abdeladim el-K., who investigators believe was the leader of the cell. He had allegedly brought the virus of Islamist terror from Afghanistan to Düsseldorf and had been in contact with Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, a senior member of al-Qaida. The two men had apparently met in an al-Qaida training camp in Pakistan, and it appeared that el-K. was al-Qaida's man for the Rhine-Ruhr region of western Germany.
Most Have Attended Training Camps
Much has changed in the Islamist terrorist scene in Germany in the almost 10 years since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but one constant has remained. Like the 9/11 attackers, the overwhelming majority of militant jihadists in Germany have attended training camps run by al-Qaida or affiliated groups.
In these camps, would-be terrorists receive instruction on terrorism techniques and are given orders to be carried out in Europe. The camps are still in the Hindu Kush region that straddles Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, but now they are somewhat farther to the south than before, in the border area between the two countries. The Western invasion of Afghanistan did not change that. Neither have countless military offensives or US drone attacks.
Osama bin Laden is dead, as are many of his closest associates. But the recruitment of new blood is still going strong. The terror network has been continually transforming itself, as new terrorists have come up through the ranks, running individual camps and smaller organizations, before disappearing from view again. (...)
Posted May 10th, 2011 by pk
Homegrown Terror Takes on New Dimensions
Spiegel Online 10 May 2011
By Marcel Rosenbach and Holger Stark
Osama bin Laden may be dead, but al-Qaida is alive and well in Germany. Each month, an average of five Islamists leave the country for terrorist training camps in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area. Recent arrests in Düsseldorf show just how dangerous homegrown terror has become.
It isn't easy being a militant Islamist, as Abdeladim el-K. and Jamil S. learned on a Tuesday two weeks ago. The two men were sitting in a two-room apartment on Witzelstrasse in the German city of Düsseldorf, complaining to each other about how complicated it is to build a functioning bomb. "Bomb is not so difficult as detonator," said Abdeladim el-K., "because detonator more dangerous than bomb."
The al-Qaida handbooks make it all sound so easy. You buy charcoal lighters and extract the hexamine, and already you have a component for a bomb. Apparently the method works everywhere, except possibly in Germany, where charcoal lighters have a different chemical composition than in other countries. In Düsseldorf, investigators would later discover a cooking pot the two men may have wanted to use to boil down the lighters.
The apartment was under surveillance, as were the men's phones and computers. The police had been listening in on the two men's conversations for weeks, except when the sound of the television or the washing machine drowned out what they were saying. On Wednesday, when the men, speaking in broken German, began discussing "making an attack at bus stop" or possibly on a bus, the federal prosecutor's office decided to move in rather than wait until the would-be terrorists had built their bomb and were ready to use it.
On the morning of Friday, April 29, police arrested Moroccan national Abdeladim el-K., 29, German-Moroccan electrician Jamil S., 31 and German-Iranian student Amid C., 19, who was on the verge of taking his final examinations prior to graduating from high school.
At the center of the investigation in Düsseldorf was Abdeladim el-K., who investigators believe was the leader of the cell. He had allegedly brought the virus of Islamist terror from Afghanistan to Düsseldorf and had been in contact with Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, a senior member of al-Qaida. The two men had apparently met in an al-Qaida training camp in Pakistan, and it appeared that el-K. was al-Qaida's man for the Rhine-Ruhr region of western Germany.
Most Have Attended Training Camps
Much has changed in the Islamist terrorist scene in Germany in the almost 10 years since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but one constant has remained. Like the 9/11 attackers, the overwhelming majority of militant jihadists in Germany have attended training camps run by al-Qaida or affiliated groups.
In these camps, would-be terrorists receive instruction on terrorism techniques and are given orders to be carried out in Europe. The camps are still in the Hindu Kush region that straddles Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, but now they are somewhat farther to the south than before, in the border area between the two countries. The Western invasion of Afghanistan did not change that. Neither have countless military offensives or US drone attacks.
Osama bin Laden is dead, as are many of his closest associates. But the recruitment of new blood is still going strong. The terror network has been continually transforming itself, as new terrorists have come up through the ranks, running individual camps and smaller organizations, before disappearing from view again. (...)
Posted May 10th, 2011 by pk
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