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Communications Intercept Led To Bomb-Plot Arrests

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Los Angeles Times

Published: September 7, 2007

STUTTGART, Germany - A U.S. intelligence intercept of suspicious communications between Pakistan and Stuttgart last year 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 said Thursday.

The communications detected referred to apparent terrorist activity and were specific and alarming, said the German and U.S. officials, who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to discuss the case publicly.
American authorities passed on the lead 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 in Stuttgart suspected that militants here 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 in 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 been identified publicly as Fritz Gelowicz, 28.

Arrested this week with the two other suspects, he was described Thursday by antiterror 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.

Some 300 investigators worked around the clock for nine months to monitor the alleged plotters.

Using sophisticated eavesdropping equipment of their own, the Germans watched and listened as the suspected cell coalesced and amassed a stash of bomb-making materials.

When they announced the arrests Wednesday, German authorities said they had focused on Gelowicz after he was briefly detained in January on suspicion of scouting a U.S. military barracks.

But in reality, Gelowicz and his associates had already been identified as an urgent threat thanks to the American intercept last year, according to officials in both countries.

'The U.S. counterterrorism community supported efforts to draw links, to do intercepts and to monitor communications between Pakistan and Germany,' a U.S. counterterrorism official said.

The official described the initial intercept as 'a key factor. This was a long investigation. But it helped build the case. It led to a very long period of surveillance, and the arrests. It also continued during the investigation.'

This year, U.S. intelligence agents intercepted a key communication in which militant handlers in Pakistan asked for an update on the plot and pushed the suspects to move faster, according to U.S. and German officials.

At the start of the investigation, American intelligence also helped German police focus on the second convert, Daniel Martin Schneider, a German official said.

U.S. intercepts detected the 22-year-old convert's e-mail communications with Pakistan and guided German police to him through a wireless signal he was pirating, officials said.

The suspects wanted to kill as many Americans as possible, officials said.

Probable targets of their alleged plan to build three car-bombs were crowded bars, nightclubs, restaurants and airports. They chose Germany because it was their home turf and because of the large population of Americans around its military bases.

The jailed trio were all unemployed; the two German natives collected welfare.

Authorities said the three claimed allegiance to the Islamic Jihad Union, an Uzbeki group that broke off from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an al-Qaida ally, in 2002. The third man arrested in a police raid at a vacation home in central Germany was identified as Adem Yilmaz, 29.

Information from The New York Times was used in this report.

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