Sauerland verdict

A German court has sentenced four self-confessed Islamic militants to up to 12 years in jail for a failed plot to attack US targets in Germany.

In the country's biggest terror trial in decades, a higher regional court in Duesseldorf sentenced the two German converts, Fritz Gelowicz and Daniel Schneider, to 12 years each. Turkish national Adem Yilmaz was sentenced to 11 years, while German-Turkish citizen Attila Selek will go to jail for five years.

"You were planning a monstrous bloodbath that would have killed an unfathomable number of people," Judge Ottmar Breidling said at the end of the trial, adding that their goal was to kill at least 150 American soldiers stationed in Germany.

"You were blinded by a strange, hate-filled notion of jihad and you turned yourselves into angels of death in the name of Islam," Breidling said.

The four defendants in the so-called 'Sauerland' cell had planned a "mass murder unrivaled in Germany," said federal prosecutor Volker Brinkmann in his closing argument. "The plot still sends chills down one's spine. They appointed themselves masters over life and death."

Defense attorneys, however, called it "the largest failed terrorist attack." They had been asking for sentences of under ten years.

The defendants, self-confessed Islamic militants, admitted to planning large-scale bomb attacks for the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) against discos and bars frequented by Americans, airports and US military facilities in Germany.

The attacks had been planned for October 2007, during a parliament vote to extend German participation in the NATO force in Afghanistan.

Police caught the first three suspects, Daniel Schneider, Fritz Gelowicz and Adem Yilmaz, in September 2007 as they were preparing 410 kilograms of explosives – 100 times the amount used in the 2005 London bombings, prosectors said. The fourth defendant, Atilla Selek, was later captured in Turkey.

Rainer Wendt, the head of the German Police Association, told the Bild newspaper's online editions that the Association welcomed the verdict.

"The judgement shows that the German justice system is determined to proceed rigorously and without compromise," Wendt said. But he also cautioned that "one should not have any illusions that terrorists are deterred by prison sentences."

cmk/AFP/AP/dpa/apn
Editor: Rob Turner