Christians Under Attack

A senior al-Qaeda figure on the Afghan-Pakistan border reportedly gave the order but the target had still not been chosen.

The three suspects were arrested in the cities of Duesseldorf and Bochum after allegedly buying bomb-making chemicals.

They had reportedly been under surveillance for several months.

The group's 29-year-old suspected ring-leader, Moroccan national Abdeladim K, was charged in a federal court in Karlsruhe on Saturday with membership of a foreign terrorist organisation.

The other two suspects, Jamil S, a 31-year-old German-Moroccan, and Amid C, a 19-year-old German-Iranian, were to appear in court in the city later.

Islamists in Germany have been associated with several attacks:

• In March, an ethnic Kosovo Albanian shot dead two US airmen on a bus at Frankfurt airport, injuring two others before his gun jammed; he told police he had wanted to avenge Afghans killed by Americans, but he was not thought to be part of a militant group

• In 2006, home-made bombs were placed on trains in Cologne but failed to explode; a Lebanese man was jailed for life for the attack

• The 9/11 ring-leader, Mohammed Atta, worshipped in a mosque in the northern city of Hamburg

'Trained in Waziristan'

Abdeladim K had been in regular contact with a senior al-Qaeda member based on the Afghan-Pakistan border, deputy federal prosecutor Rainer Griesbaum told reporters in Karlsruhe.

The trio had planned to set off a shrapnel-laden bomb in a crowded place such as on a bus, but the plot had still been "in the experimental phase", he said.

Joerg Ziercke, president of the federal criminal police office (BKA), said there had been seven or eight people in the cell.

Abdeladim K had been in the country illegally since November last year, he said.

Previous to that, he had spent some time in an al-Qaeda training camp in the Pakistani tribal region of Waziristan, close to the Afghan border, according to Mr Griesbaum.

 

 

 

 

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