TIMESONLINE: German police have foiled a potentially huge terrorist attack in what they believe may be the first case of white, home-grown Islamist terrorists in Europe.
Three men - two Germans and a Turk who are believed to have received explosives training at a terrorist camp in Pakistan - were arraigned by the federal prosecutor today, capping a nine-month police operation.
During that time, undercover agents, supplied with intelligence from the United States, followed and eavesdropped on the young men as they collected 750 kilos of hydrogen peroxide and military detonators to be used in simultaneous suicide truck bomb attacks on American installations and meeting places.
Hydrogen peroxide was a key ingredient in the London Tube bombs, but experts said the explosives being prepared in a villa in the Black Forest would have wrought destrution [sic] on an even greater scale.
Conversations between the suspected terrorists, bugged by the police, mentioned the Ramstein air base, Frankfurt Airport and clubs used by American families as possible targets.
”They were motivated by hatred of America and this influenced their choice of targets,” said Juergen Ziercke, president of the Federal Criminal Investigation Agency (BKA), the German equivalent of Scotland Yard.
Several terrorist plots have been nipped in the bud in Germany since September 11, 2001, but this one has shocked Germans more than any other as it exposed the existence of jihadists as a home-grown terrorist potential. German police foil huge car bomb terror attack (more)
Mark Alexander
