http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060822/ap_on_re_eu/germany_terror_connections_1
Train bombing plot surprises Germany
By DAVID RISING, Associated Press WriterTue Aug 22, 6:19 PM ET
A Lebanese student suspected of planting a train bomb that failed to explode
had contacts in Hamburg, authorities said Tuesday, the latest link to the
northern port city where three of the Sept. 11 suicide pilots prepared for
their attacks.
The planned attack here stunned Germans who thought the country's vehement
opposition to the Iraq war would insulate it from becoming a terror target
almost five years after the attacks on Washington and New York.
The main suspect, identified by authorities as 21-year-old Youssef Mohamad
el Hajdib, was arrested Saturday in Kiel, about 30 miles north of Hamburg,
on suspicion of placing one of two suitcase bombs in German trains on July
31.
On Tuesday, federal prosecutors said they had identified a second key
suspect, while police searched his Cologne apartment as well as addresses in
Kiel and Oberhausen.
ZDF television showed police leading away one man in handcuffs after one of
the raids, and said another person had also been detained.
However, prosecutors said a suspected bomber, whose name they did not
release, remains at large.
The Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper cited investigators as saying the men
were suspected of having contact with the radical Islamic movement
Hizb-ut-Tahrir.
Authorities are investigating ties between the suspects and the Muslim
community in Hamburg, where Sept. 11 suicide pilots Mohamed Atta, Marwan
al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah all lived undetected before moving to the United
States to attend flight schools, said Manfred Murck, deputy head of the
Hamburg state agency that tracks extremism.
"It seems like we do, once again, have some contacts to Hamburg, which is
not really surprising," he said. "If somebody lives in Kiel and feels
involved in the Islamist scene, it seems to be more or less plausible that
he may have a friend or a mosque to visit in Hamburg."
Murck would not elaborate, saying only "we are working, of course, to find
out what in our files can help us to identify possible contact persons."
German authorities were widely criticized for not picking up on the Sept. 11
plot, and stiffened counterterrorism laws in the wake of the attacks, though
with police-state excesses of the country's Nazi past in mind, were wary of
going too far.
While there have been other terrorism plots uncovered since Sept. 11, none
has come so close to success.
"I have always said we are threatened by terrorism, and the threat has never
been so near," Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told ZDF television
after el Hajdib's arrest, calling the case "unusually serious."
Where Germany before Sept. 11 was seen as a relatively comfortable base for
terrorists to live and operate - but not a target - that is no longer the
case, said Kai Hirschmann, deputy director of Essen's Institute for
Terrorism Research and Security Policy.
"Intelligence agencies and police are now very much trying to arrest them
.... and the scene is under constant surveillance," Hirschmann said.
Germany is also seen as being on the side of the U.S. and Britain, despite
its opposition to the Iraq war, for helping train Iraqi police and military
outside the country, taking a large role in operations in Afghanistan, and
making other contributions to the so-called "war on terror," he said.
In the failed train bombings, the evidence points to poorly trained radicals
not closely linked to terrorist networks, Hirschmann said.
The bombs were cobbled together from propane barbecue canisters to be
triggered with gasoline and makeshift detonators that went off but failed to
ignite the gas. They were found in suitcases on regional trains in Dortmund
and Koblenz.
"It looked rather rushed or amateur. There might be some connection with the
Islamist network, the jihad network, but not in the sense that we witnessed
in Madrid or London," Hirschmann said, referring to the train bombings in
Madrid and the London subway bombings.
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The alligator turns his attention to the last one.
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