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CRIME

Islamists charged in anti-US terror plot

German federal prosecutors charged on Tuesday three men accused of planning attacks on US citizens and interests, including US military installations.

Published: 2 September 2008 15:50 CEST
Islamists charged in anti-US terror plot
The suspects purchased several containers of hydrogen peroxide. Photo: DPA

The three men – two German converts to Islam and a Turk – were arrested last September. They had attended training camps in Pakistan and were stockpiling chemicals to make car bombs, prosecutors had said at the time. Authorities reportedly learned of the second plot thanks to US surveillance of internet communications between Pakistan and Germany.

The alleged plotters, all in their 20s, were believed to belong to the Islamic Jihad Union, a group with links to Al-Qaida.

A spokesman for the prosecutors office declined to give details on what the three had been charged with.

The men had over 700 kilos (1,500 pounds) of hydrogen peroxide, the same chemical used in the 2005 attacks on London’s transport system which killed 56 people, prosecutors had said, with the explosive power of 550 kilos of TNT.

Just before police arrested the three, drums containing the chemicals had been moved recently to a holiday home in the Sauerland area in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia which had been rented under a false name.

CRIME

Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

A 17-year-old has turned himself in to police in Germany after an attack on a lawmaker that the country's leaders decried as a threat to democracy.

Published: 5 May 2024 12:52 CEST
Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

The teenager reported to police in the eastern city of Dresden early Sunday morning and said he was “the perpetrator who had knocked down the SPD politician”, police said in a statement.

Matthias Ecke, 41, European parliament lawmaker for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), was set upon by four attackers as he put up EU election posters in Dresden on Friday night, according to police.

Ecke was “seriously injured” and required an operation after the attack, his party said.

Scholz on Saturday condemned the attack as a threat to democracy.

“We must never accept such acts of violence,” he said.

Ecke, who is head of the SPD’s European election list in the Saxony region, was just the latest political target to be attacked in Germany.

Police said a 28-year-old man putting up posters for the Greens had been “punched” and “kicked” earlier in the evening on the same Dresden street.

Last week two Greens deputies were abused while campaigning in Essen in western Germany and another was surrounded by dozens of demonstrators in her car in the east of the country.

According to provisional police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed against politicians in Germany in 2023, up from 1,806 the previous year, but less than the 2,840 recorded in 2021, when legislative elections took place.

A group of activists against the far right has called for demonstrations against the attack on Ecke in Dresden and Berlin on Sunday, Der Spiegel magazine said.

According to the Tagesspiegel newspaper, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser is planning to call a special conference with Germany’s regional interior ministers next week to address violence against politicians.

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