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German Police Arrest Couple in Planned Attack on U.S. Base
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German Interior Minister Otto Schily, left,
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STUTTGART, Germany, Sept 6 (IslamOnline & News agencies) - German police detained a 24-year-old man, of Turkish origins, as well as his girlfriend, who possessed a large quantity of material that could make explosives, a regional government spokesman said Friday, September 06, 2002.
According to U.S. daily The Washington Post, the woman holds joint American and German citizenship. They were suspected of planning a terrorist attack on U.S. Army Headquarters in Europe where the American works in a civilian capacity.
The man was held near the southwestern German town of Heidelberg, the spokesman for Baden-Wuerttemberg state authorities said, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
According to an early report from Saturday's Bild daily, he is suspected of plotting to attack U.S. establishments. It said investigators were also probing any possible link to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
The woman, who was not identified, was a civilian employee at a store, known in military parlance as the PX, on the U.S. base in Heidelberg, U.S. sources told the Post. Her employment status would have allowed her access to facilities on the base where the Army in Europe is headquartered. The Army's 5th Corps headquarters and a small NATO facility are also located on the base.
For their part, U.S. military officials declined to comment. However, a U.S. official said the police suspect the couple was planning to launch a bomb attack on the base, where the Army maintains a planning staff and where hundreds of U.S. personnel and their families live, according to the Post.
The alleged plot represents one of the most serious threats to U.S. personnel since Sept. 11.
It is not known if the couple had any connection to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network; only very tentative links have been established between militant Turkish groups in Germany and that organization.
The arrests, and the fact that one of the alleged plotters is American, are likely to lead to even more intensive security measures at U.S. military facilities, which were already on a heightened state of security.
The ZDF television in Germany cited unnamed U.S. agents as saying that in Heidleberg there was an Islamic center, which financed, at least in part, the al-Qaeda attacks against the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
According to the station, the German authorities are presently investigating possible links between the Islamic center and the Turkish man they have arrested.
Earlier this week, the Berliner Zeitung daily said German police were about to swoop on suspected terrorist cells in the country.
German Interior Minister Otto Schily also warned recently that while al-Qaeda had been weakened, the European Union and the United States were still in danger of potential attacks.
Next Wednesday marks the first anniversary of the September 11 suicide plane attacks, strikes on New York and Washington blamed on Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda in which almost 3,000 people died.
The allegedly ringleader in the September 11 attacks, Mohammed Atta, who died along with 18 other hijackers, ran an al-Qaeda cell in the northern German city Hamburg.
Meanwhile, in the United States the FBI arrested a German man in New York on suspicion of terrorism, reported BBC’s online news service.
The German prosecutor's office said the man, from Hamburg, was now being questioned by U.S. officials in Virginia
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