FOUR ISLAMIC militants have been jailed up for up to 12 years for stockpiling explosives with the aim of attacking US citizens and military bases in Germany.
Fritz Gelowicz and Daniel Schneider, two German-born converts to Islam, were convicted on charges of membership of an illegal organisation and conspiring in a plot dubbed a “second 9/11” by presiding judge Ottmar Breidling.
Turkish citizen Adem Yilmaz received an 11-year sentence, while a fourth man, German-born Atilla Selek, was given a five-year sentence.
“You planned a monstrous bloodbath that would have killed an unfathomable number of people,” said Judge Ottmar Breidling in his verdict yesterday. “You were blinded by a strange, hate-filled notion of jihad.”
The group was dubbed the “Sauerland Cell” after the region of North Rhine-Westphalia where they stored barrels of hydrogen peroxide – 700kg in all – capable of producing explosive devices with greater force than those used in the Madrid bombings of 2004.
Germans were shocked by television images of the police raid in September 2007 that brought home how, as in other European countries, home-grown Islamic extremism was now a reality in Germany.
The raid came after months of police monitoring of the group’s activities and communications, prompted by a tip-off from US intelligence. Unknown to the group, police emptied the barrels and refilled them with a peroxide of a harmless concentration.
Gelowicz, Schneider and Yilmaz were arrested during the raid while Selek was arrested two months later in Turkey and extradited to Germany.
After a 10-month hearing, the Düsseldorf trial was expected to last another two years but was foreshortened after all four men confessed.
Prosecutors say their 1,700 pages of transcribed confessions have given important insights into the operation of the al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group, the Islamic Jihad Union.
According to prosecutors, the men wanted to kill up to 150 American citizens with bombs in discos and bars in Cologne, Düsseldorf and Frankfurt, as well as at the Ramstein air base.
The conspirators hoped the bombings would influence an upcoming parliamentary vote on renewing Germany’s military mandate in Afghanistan.
Judge Breidling, a veteran of trials against the RAF (Rote Armee Fraktion) left-wing terrorists, said the plot “showed with frightening clarity” the consequences of the “violent Islamism that has penetrated our society and turned young men against it”.
The judge took into account their confessions and expressions of remorse in passing sentences below the 15-year maximum.
Munich-born Fritz Gelowicz (31), a doctor’s son who converted to Islam aged 16, was portrayed as the mastermind of the gang, which was formed during training in the Pakistani border region of Waziristan in 2006.
In his ruling, Judge Breidling dubbed Gelowicz a “would-be angel of death in the name of Islam . . . who was in reality a deluded extremist without even the most rudimentary understanding” of the religion.
He renounced terrorism last month after his wife was arrested for fundraising for the illegal Islamic Jihad Union.
Fellow German Daniel Schneider pulled a police officer’s gun from its holster and shot during the September 2007 police raid, but missed his target. All four men have accepted the verdict and will not appeal.
“This was a verdict for which my client was prepared,” said Dirk Uden, defence lawyer for Gelowicz.
German terrorism experts however have questioned the value of the group’s testimony and suggest that it would be of only limited help to investigators
“Since their arrest in 2007, methods have changed,” security consultant Guido Steinberg said on German television. “This group has played no role at all for three years.”