SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: Robert B. wore long robes, dreamed of paradise and called himself Abdul Hakiim. He and his friend were arrested in July for trying to enter Britain with bomb-making guides and al-Qaida propaganda. They now sit in a London high-security prison. But Robert's motivations remain a mystery.
A mother can't be fooled, and a mother notices when her child goes astray, says Marlies B. That's why she called the state authorities in October 2010 and asked if she needed to be worried about her son.
Her son Robert had changed. He'd converted to Islam, forsaken pork and alcohol, and now he wore a knit wool cap and wandered the city of Solingen, northeast of Cologne, in floor-length garments. Marlies B. says she'd never seen him this way. People asked her about it, and it was embarrassing. It frightened her.
At the end of July -- after a period when she couldn't reach him, either on his cell phone or at his apartment -- she printed out a statement from his bank account. (Robert had given her notarized power of attorney years before.) She noticed a flight booked for €447 ($647), and "all of my alarm bells went off," she says. She drove to a national-security office in Wuppertal.
"You're son is doing well," an official told her, asking her to take a seat in the hall. Marlies B. had an uneasy feeling. A mother knows, she says. Two other officials came upstairs. They had just searched Robert's apartment, and they told her that her son had been in a London prison since July 15. » | Julia Jüttner, Solingen | Tuesday, August 30, 2011
