Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

U.S. tip led to terrorism arrests

Los Angeles Times The Spokesman-Review

STUTTGART, Germany – A U.S. intelligence intercept of suspicious communications between Pakistan and Stuttgart was the initial break that ultimately led to the arrest this week of three suspected Muslim militants accused of plotting massive car-bomb attacks here against Americans, U.S. and German officials told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday.

The communications detected last year referred to apparent terrorist activity and were specific and alarming, the officials said.

American authorities passed the lead on to German police, who conducted a painstaking investigation that led to the arrests of the three suspects, two of them German converts to Islam. After receiving the initial lead, police here suspected that militants were communicating with Pakistan from an Internet cafe, a frequent strategy to avoid detection, but they did not know which one. So they deployed surveillance teams at several dozen Internet cafes around the city, officials said.

The laborious stakeouts paid off when police spotted a 28-year-old convert who was already known as an associate of Islamic militants and has now been identified publicly as Fritz G.

Arrested this week with the two other suspects, he was described Thursday by anti-terrorism officials as the lead figure of a group that learned bomb-making at an al-Qaida-linked training camp in Pakistan last year. The three are accused of plotting to massacre Americans at or near military bases and airports in Germany with the equivalent of more than 1,000 pounds of TNT. The third man jailed is a Turkish Muslim who has been living in Germany.

On Thursday, police pressed their investigation of at least seven other suspects, including several who are believed to have left the country.