Suspect: Sauerland cell planned attack on German airports

Aug 11, 2009, 16:04 GMT

Berlin - A member of the group of suspected militant Islamists at the centre of one of Germany's largest terrorism trials since the 1970s has said his group had planned an attack on one of two major airports.

Adem Yilmaz, 30, told the court on Tuesday that the Islamic Jihad Union to which he is believed to have belonged, intended to attack either Dusseldorf or Dortmund airport.

The group of four were apprehended in 2007 by German special forces as they were preparing some 730 litres of hydrogen peroxide liquid explosives after long surveillance.

The four made a dramatic decision in June to give extensive confessions in return for reduced sentences, and prosecutors have taken the testimonies, which run to some 1,200 pages, over the past four weeks.

On Monday Fritz Gelowicz, a German-born convert to Islam and the suspected leader of the group, laid down an extensive confession for the court in Dusseldorf.

Gelowicz admitted that he, along with Yilmaz, Daniel Schneider and Attila Selek, had planned to attack US interests in Europe.

However, Yilmaz said Tuesday that the group didn't intend to harm civilians as part of the airport attack, but cause it to be shut down.

'Muslims would have then been affected. We didn't want that,' he said.

Yilmaz said that ideas about holy war had been, and remained, behind his actions in the group.

'Martyrdom is my goal, that hasn't changed,' he said.

Details of how the group operated in Germany continued to come out on Tuesday, as Gelowicz continued his confession.

Gelowicz said that he and Yilmaz were the two leading members of the group, and had led preparations for the airport attack.

He added that the group had obtained detonator technology from an associate in Turkey, known as Mevlut K., who was reported by the German Stern magazine earlier this month as having been a double agent for the Turkish secret service.

'I was convinced that he was on our side,' Gelowicz said.

Gelowicz claimed that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had played a part in his path toward his jihad.

The case of Khaled al-Masri, a German citizen living in the city of Ulm who in 2003 was apparently kidnapped, flown to Afghanistan and tortured at the hands of the CIA, was 'the straw that broke the camel's back,' said Gelowicz.

'The Americans carried the war into my mosque,' he said.

Gelowicz also alleged that the CIA had attempted to kidnap his fellow Islamic Jihad Union member, Attila Selek.

The 29-year-old told the court that he was a deeply religious Muslim.

'I am and remain convinced of my religion,' he said, citing the attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, as part of his motivation. Gelowicz converted to Islam at the age of 16 in Ulm.

The four men could face up to 15 years in prison for planning the attacks.