Three
suspected bomb plotters were arrested in Germany last week. After
London and Madrid, is al-Qaeda now concentrating on Europe, exploiting
its large homegrown population of Muslims and converts? Jason Burke
reports from Frankfurt on the changing face of terrorism
Fritz Gelowicz is a tall, good-looking 28-year-old with long
brown hair and an easy smile. Polite and well-spoken, he paid his rent
on time and happily did his share of the cleaning of the communal
stairs in the block of flats where he and his wife lived in the
southern German city of Neu Ulm.
Yet
Europe woke up last week to see his face on front pages across the
continent under dramatic headlines about al-Qaeda and a massive and
apparently narrowly averted attack near Frankfurt. The trained
engineer, who converted to Islam at the age of 16, had been arrested in
a holiday home in a bucolic village in the Sauerland, in central
western Germany.
Nearby, police found a detonator and nearly 700
litres of hydrogen peroxide, the bleaching chemical which can be used
to make bombs like those used in the London Underground attack two
years ago. Had they been successful, the attacks that the group are
accused of planning on the American military air base in Ramstein and
the international airport at Frankfurt could have killed hundreds of
people.
Though German investigators are still hunting seven more
suspects at home and abroad, they believe they have wound up the
network. But threat levels are higher than ever. And for good reason.
The
Observer has learnt that senior Islamic militant leaders based in
Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan have decided to step up attacks in
Europe. This summer, European intelligence agencies issued a series of
warnings about attacks orchestrated from what one source last week
called 'the Grand Central station of jihad': the lawless tribal-run
regions on Pakistan's western borders with Afghanistan.
Gelowicz,
claim German investigators, trained in a camp in the area and received
his final instructions by email from Pakistan. So, reportedly, did the
leaders of eight men arrested on terrorism charges in Copenhagen, the
Danish capital last week. 'If you imagine western Pakistan as the hub,
with lines radiating out from it, it is clear that by the time you get
to Denmark or Germany or wherever, those lines have diverged fairly
substantially,' said one source. 'But they all originated in the same
place.'
Though the most recent alleged terrorist plot in Britain
- the so-called 'Doctors' Plot' of June - did not involve any confirmed
links to Pakistan, many other high-profile attacks or attempted attacks
have done so. Key figures in the 7 July bombings and the plot,
uncovered by the police's Operation Crevice, to bomb targets in
south-east England with fertiliser bombs trained in camps along the
Pakistan-Afghan border. Osama bin Laden and his close associates are
believed to be hiding in the area - it is thought that the video
released yesterday by al-Qaeda and featuring their leader was filmed
there - as are a range of other militant leaders from countries as far
apart as Libya and Uzbekistan. Bin Laden's video was titled, in
English, 'an address to the American people'.
'America remains
the number one target, but is hard to hit. If they could get on a plane
and arrive in Cincinnati, they would. But they can't, so Europe is the
next best option,' the source said.
Striking Europe serves other
purposes too: militants hope that a successful attack on a western
country that has troops deployed in Afghanistan might force a
government to pull them out from the fight against the Taliban, helping
Afghan fighters whose relations with the international militants based
in the region are often tense. Equally, bombs in London, Frankfurt or
Madrid have a powerful propaganda effect on Muslims in the Middle East
and in central and south-west Asia, which have always been the 'core
audience' for al-Qaeda and other groups. Finally, anything that can be
done to further a 'dynamic of confrontation' in Europe is helpful.
'The
militants know that tens of millions of happily integrated European
Muslims is a big problem for them and that a massive upsurge of
radicalisation of Europe's Muslims is a huge problem for us,' said a
second, US-based, intelligence source. 'The best way to rile things up
and set communities against each other is to have bombs going off left,
right and centre.
'Ten years ago there was no real homegrown
terrorism problem in western Europe. Now there is. The militants see
that as a major achievement and something to build on. They have
limited resources so are looking to maximise the return on any
investment,' the US source said.
This weekend, Germans are
agonising over the possibility that the nation's three million Muslims,
hitherto largely untouched by the sort of radicalism seen in Britain
and France, has been affected by the al-Qaeda ideology and global
tensions. Along with a second convert, the third suspect arrested last
week is a Turkish immigrant.
However, many analysts insist that
seeing Pakistan as 'the source of all evil' is not right. They stress
that the volunteers are radicalised at home and make their way to the
camps 'under their own steam'. This means that militants simply exploit
'the raw material'. One intelligence source described the targeting of
attacks as 'opportunistic'.
Current analysis is that the bulk of
the volunteers in the region are south Asian or Arab and will be sent
into action in the primary local theatre, which is Afghanistan.
Equally, volunteers with Western passports will BE exploited as
particularly valuable assets, and will be turned around and sent back
to their countries of origin to commit attacks or develop networks.
Britain is particularly vulnerable in this regard because of the
historic links it has with Pakistan and the large Muslim population of
Pakistani origin.
At least seven Germans and 18 individuals with
British nationality are currently detained in Pakistan. Bin Laden has
threatened virtually every western European country - making an
exception for Sweden - in communications over recent years. In the most
recent video, released on Friday, he referred specifically to the
French President, Nicolas Sarkozy.
The alleged plot uncovered
last week in Germany is doubly worrying as it involves both 'homegrown'
suspects and converts. Germany has only seen a handful of conspiracies
before: it was the staging ground for the 9/11 hijackers and the scene
of a failed attempt to detonate bombs on trains last year, allegedly by
two Lebanese men. This was believed to be an initiation test aimed at
proving their ability before travelling to Iraq. Until last week, most
Germans believed the threat to their nation to be relatively low.
'Sadly,
the phenomenon of the home-grown threat that you have had in the UK for
some years now has finally come to Germany,' said Rolf Tophoven,
director of the German Institute for Terrorism and Security Policy
Research. 'Before, the threat has come from immigrants, now these are
German-born guys and converts to Islam. That is a very, very serious
development.'
Converts have already figured significantly in
terrorism in Europe, comprising 8 per cent of militants arrested in
Europe according to a recent survey by Dutch analysts. In Britain, one
of the 7 July bombers was a convert, as was Richard Reid, the 'shoe
bomber' in prison in America for attempting to blow up a transatlantic
jet in 2001.
Converts have also been bit players in conspiracies
in the Netherlands and America. A US-born convert is believed to be
based in Pakistan playing a key role in al-Qaeda's propaganda. But few
converts have Gelowicz's profile. 'A leading mind, the one with
initiative, the co-ordinator,' said August Hanning, state secretary at
the German Interior Ministry. 'He possessed enormous criminal energy.
Very cold-blooded and full of hatred.'
Gelowicz's suspected path
into jihad is a textbook example of radicalisation. Born in Munich, the
son of a doctor and a businessman, he moved to Ulm when young. When his
parents divorced - the teenager was badly affected by the split, say
school friends - he remained with his father, working for the family
business to finance his education, studying business and engineering at
a local college.
At around the age of 18, he converted to Islam
and is believed to have started spending time at a religious centre -
the 'MultiKultur Haus' - the heart of what was known to police as the
'Ulm Islamic scene'. It was run by hardline conservative Muslims
steeped in the Wahabi doctrine of the Arabian Gulf and funded by major
religious foundations in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait devoted to propagating
Wahabism.
Many of the young men attending the centre had family
problems or difficulties with drugs. Encouraged to borrow works by
radical preachers from the library at the centre, which was shut down
in 2005 after more than 30 people connected with it had been deported,
and to train in its boxing gym, some, according to reports, were given
mobile phones to keep in touch with mentors at the centre even if their
parents wanted them to break off contact.
Those running the
centre, wittingly or unwittingly, had put together a sophisticated
package of radicalisation. Potential recruits were exposed to
propaganda, practised a physical and psychologically demanding activity
that develops team spirit and were progressively cut off from previous
social contacts, including friends and family.
Mosques played a
minimal part in the process, with less formal religious spaces, the
Islamic centre, and restaurants, cafes and private homes playing a far
greater part. By 2004, Gelowicz was on police files as a potential
threat and was arrested on at least one occasion.
In 2005, he
made a pilgrimage to Mecca, where he is thought to have met German
militants who had connections to the militant Islamic Jihad Union Group
in Pakistan. Though the connection to an Uzbek group may seem odd, it
is explained by the fact that most German Muslims are of Turkish
descent. There is therefore a natural cultural link with the Turkish
Uzbeks in the same way that British Pakistani radicals have a historic
link with Kashmiri militant fighters and North African immigrants in
France become involved with Algerian or Moroccan groups.
In March
last year, Gelowicz signed on for a year's course in Arabic in
Damascus. Syria is seen by European intelligence agencies as a key
staging post for young militants. Many use the numerous language
schools, often run by religious foundations, in the country as cover
before disappearing to Iraq or to Afghanistan and Pakistan via the
Yemen or Iran. The French government has tracked dozens of young French
Muslims along the route in recent years, arresting many on their return.
According
to German intelligence, it is alleged that Gelowicz reached Pakistan
and trained in a makeshift camp run by the Islamic Union of Jihad, an
Uzbek group which has turned from fighting the repressive Tashkent
regime to international jihad. The terrorist infrastructure in the
rugged hills along the Afghan border is makeshift but can be effective.
Court testimony during the trial of those arrested in Operation Crevice
revealed details of bomb instruction sessions in ordinary houses in
towns such as Kohat or in remote rural areas.
However, the speed
at which instruction has to be carried out to avoid surveillance causes
problems for the militants. One key figure in the Crevice case forgot
the crucial ratios needed to mix the explosives and had to email a
contact in Pakistan for help. That mail was intercepted. And though
German officials and politicians have insisted on the alleged
dedication of Gelowicz and his co-conspirators - both of whom are
alleged to have accompanied him to Pakistan - others have questioned
their competence.
'They went out and bought enough hydrogen
peroxide to supply a hairdresser for years, they gave interviews to
journalists,' said Christoph Reuter, Hamburg-based author of a book on
Islamic militancy. 'They are hardly highly-trained professionals.'
However,
allegedly trained, ready and motivated, the three men were back in
Germany by the end of last year, awaiting instructions, say police. The
accusation is that these came in the form of a note placed in the
'drafts folder' of an email address to which Gelowicz had access. But
that address was under surveillance by US agencies, who tipped off
their Berlin-based counterparts. The Americans traced one member of the
group through a broadband wireless signal that he was using illegally.
Agents also picked up the trace of the alleged Danish plot - which
involves men of Pakistani, Afghan and Palestinian origin. Key members
of the group had been in Pakistan as late as this May, though they had
been making trips to the country for a year or more.
'If it had
not been for the interception of the email, there would have been a lot
of people dead,' said one German intelligence source.
Yet no one
is complacent, not least as the plot has focused attention on the
potential role of converts in coming terrorist operations. 'Converts
pose particular difficulties,' said Tophoven, the terrorism expert.
'They are indistinguishable from the surrounding population. They are
anonymous. They are simply not on the radar screen.'
According to
some recent studies of militancy, converts are also more likely to be
radicalised. 'Converts have played a prominent role... and tend to be
the most zealous members of groups,' a recent report by the New York
Police Department noted. 'Their need to prove their religious
convictions to their companions often makes them the most aggressive
[and] conversion also tends to drive a wedge between the convert and
his [natural] family, turning the radicalising group into his
'surrogate family'.'
Gerhard Isa Moldenhauer, a member of the
board of the Central Institute of the Islam Archive of Germany and
himself a convert, said converts' determination was linked to the fact
that they were new to the faith: 'Most want to show born Muslims that
they are especially religious.' In a very limited number of cases, he
said, that means violence, though, as with the vast majority of
Muslims, most converts shun terrorism.
Moldenhauer, who converted
in 1981, said: 'The more Islam is attacked publicly, the more people
become interested in it. The greater the pressure from outside, the
higher the rate of conversion.'
Four thousand Germans converted
last year, compared with just 1,000 in 2005, according to government
statistics, bringing the total of Muslim converts in the country to
15,000.
Yahya Birt, a British convert and son of former BBC
director-general John Birt, said that though most converts were
attracted for spiritual reasons, some see it as 'a political protest'.
'The spiritual supermarket in the West is well-stocked, and some
consider Islam as a political ideology rather than a religion. At the
same time, there is a sense in society more broadly that converting to
Islam is somehow a betrayal of your society or civilisation,' he said.
British
security services have taken a particular interest in converts. The
large number of Islamic militants who convert in prisons is of deep
concern to them. 'Converts are a very important sub-group,' one
security source told The Observer. 'We see this starting out as a
social problem, with people looking for a meaning in their life. This
is not a Muslim issue.'
But one element of the German plot noted
last week by security services was the allegedly 'sheer resilience' of
the three suspects. 'They knew they were being watched, they knew their
chances of success were thin, that the likelihood of spending the rest
of their years behind bars was high, but they just kept going,' a
source said. 'That is not good news.'