Sauerland Group
August 28, 2009
The terror suspect was arrested near Frankfurt as he was leaving for a training camp in Pakistan. Federal prosecutors in Karlsruhe said Kadir T, aged 24, had been remanded in custody after a hearing. He has been charged with being a member of a terrorist organization and violation foreign trade laws.
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper said police swooped when T left home, bound for an Islamist camp somewhere near the Pakistan-Afghan border. Police investigators say the man, who has dual German and Turkish nationality, was due to undergo training to become a terrorist bomber.
Police investigators suspect he purchased a video camera and a rifle night-vision sight which an associate delivered to the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) insurgents in Waziristan in Paksitan. The IJU has its base in Uzbekistan and has ties to the international terrorist group al-Qaeda.
Kadir T. has been linked to four members of the Sauerland Group who are on trial in Duesseldorf for plotting bomb attacks in Germany, including the US air base Ramstein and other targets including airports in Dortmund and Duesseldorf in 2007. The Sauerland Group also planned attacks on American and Uzbek consulates and bars and discos.
Three members of the Sauerland Group are German converts to Islam and one is a Turkish national.
Prosecutors said T was associated to one of the plotters, Adem Yilmaz, a German national of Turkish ethnicity, who asked him in June 2007 to buy the devices. During his trial Yilmaz has confessed to plotting attacks. Prosceutors say the plotters had ten times more explosive that the terrorists who carried out bomb attacks against London's transport system in 2005. Kadir is reportedly not part of the plot to target US citizens in Germany in 2007.
nrt/dpa/Ap/AFP
Editor: Rick Demarest