Germany said yesterday it had foiled a plan by Islamist militants to carry out "massive bomb attacks" against US installations and arrested the three men behind it.
Federal prosecutor Monika Harms said the men, two German nationals and one Turk, had been on the verge of launching their attacks after acquiring enough material to make a bomb with explosive power equal to 550-kg of TNT.
"Thanks to the cooperation of federal and local police over several months, we were able to... prevent massive bomb attacks," Harms told a news conference in Karlsruhe.
"There was an imminent security threat," Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung told German television, confirming the men had been poised to launch their attacks soon.
Harms could not confirm reports the accused had been targeting Frankfurt international airport and a major US military base in Ramstein. But she said they had been seen scouting out US installations such as discos, pubs and airports.
"The apparent motive is hatred of Americans," said Federal Police chief Joerg Ziercke.
Officials said the three belonged to a little known Al-Qaida-affiliated group with roots in Uzbekistan and were believed to have been trained in Pakistan militant camps.
News of the arrests comes a day after Danish police seized eight young Muslims whom they suspect of plotting a bomb attack and having links to Al-Qaida.
They occurred less than a week before the sixth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 hijacked plane attacks on targets in the United States.
Officials said it was unclear whether there was any link between the alleged German and Danish plots.
Germany, which has forces stationed in Afghanistan, has been on high alert for attacks. The country has feared a re-emergence of militant Islamic groups since 2001, when the northern city of Hamburg was used as a base for planning the September 11 attacks.
In April the US Embassy in Berlin announced it was boosting security at diplomatic and military facilities in Germany in response to an increased threat of terrorism there.
Ziercke said the men had been seized on Tuesday at a rented house in the Sauerland region of North Rhine-Westphalia in western Germany.
Between February and August 2007, he said, the accused had acquired 12 vats and filled them with a 35 percent hydrogen peroxide solution totalling 730 kilograms.
"This amount would have been enough to cause damage on a greater scale than in London and Madrid," Ziercke said, referring to attacks which killed 52 and 191 people, respectively.
Officials said the men belonged to a domestic cell of a Sunni Muslin group called the "Islamic Jihad Union" which originated in Uzbekistan.
Some 300 police had been tracking the suspects since December, when one of them was observed scouting out a US facility in the German city of Hanau, near Frankfurt.
The police swooped on Tuesday, raiding the house and some 40 other sites across Germany, Ziercke said. One suspect escaped out a bathroom window but was detained after a scuffle with police in which a shot was fired.
Germany has not seen a major attack in several years, but two men of Lebanese origin tried to detonate crude suitcase bombs on trains last year, according to authorities. Prosecutors said the bombs failed to go off because of a technical flaw.
"We are under threat," Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told a separate news conference in Berlin. "We have to remain vigilant."
Source: China Daily/agencies
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