Three Muslims have been arrested in Germany for plotting “massive attacks” against Frankfurt International Airport and the United States’ Ramstein Air Base.
THREE men arrested in Germany had formed a terror cell to carry out "massive" bomb attacks, among the biggest on German soil, authorities say.
"They were planning massive attacks," federal prosecutor Monika Harms told reporters today.She said the suspects had amassed vast amounts of the chemical needed to make the bombs used in the suicide attacks in London in 2005 which killed 56 people.
They planned to attack Frankfurt's international airport along with the Ramstein Air Base, a key US military hub, Harms said.
They also planned to hit and nightspots popular with Americans.
"As possible targets for the attacks, the suspects named discotheques and pubs and airports frequented by Americans," she said.
The trio had trained at camps in Pakistan run by the Islamic Jihad Union, and had formed a German cell of the group, officials said.
They had procured some 700kg of hydrogen peroxide for making explosives.
Officials said the 35-per cent solution of hydrogen peroxide, stored in a hideout, could have been mixed with other additives to produce a bomb with the explosive power of 550kg of TNT.
"This would have enabled them to make bombs with more explosive power than the ones used in the London and Madrid bombings," Joerg Ziercke, the head of Germany's Federal Crime Office, told reporters.
The three suspects - two Germans and a Turk - first came to the attention of authorities because they had been observing a US military facility at the end of 2006, officials said.
The two Germans, aged 22 and 28, were converts to Islam. The Turk was aged 29.
Ziercke said of The Islamic Jihad Union: "This group distinguishes itself through its profound hatred of US citizens."
Members of Germany's elite GSG-9 anti-terrorist unit arrested two suspects at a holiday home in central Germany yesterday, Ziercke said.
The third managed to escape through a bathroom window, but was apprehended about 300 metres away by federal police who had roped off the area.
The three had no steady work and were drawing unemployment benefits while their main occupation was the plot, officials said.
**Figures, draw benefits off of the kuffir whilst complaining about being oppressed.
The Islamic Jihad Union was described as a Sunni Muslim group based in Central Asia that was an offshoot of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an extremist group with origins in that country.
Germany, which did not send troops to Iraq, has largely been spared terrorist attacks like the train and subway bombings in Madrid and London - although its involvement in the attempt to stabilise Afghanistan against Islamic insurgents has led to fears it might be targeted.
In July 2006, two gas bombs were placed on commuter trains but did not explode.
Officials said that attack was motivated by anger over cartoons portraying the Prophet Mohammad in a Danish newspaper. Several suspects are on trial in Lebanon, and a Lebanese man has been charged in Germany.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said in an interview released today that German troops would remain in Afghanistan for several more years, despite recent setbacks in the region.
"To walk away would send the wrong signal," Merkel told N-24 television.
Magnus Norell, at the Swedish Defence Research Agency, said that while Germany's mission in Afghanistan could be a motive for a terrorist attack, a flood of other factors could also play in.
"It could be discontent with Germany, or even western Europe as a whole. It's really not that easy as to say that this (Afghanistan) would be the reason for it."
**The answer is written in the Koran, the words in that book say that they(moslems) should slay the unbeliever.
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