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| Europe |
| In Plot Suspect, Germany Sees Familiar Face |
| 2007-09-07 |
| NYT, so if ya don't want to register, I submitted it all. ULM, Germany, Sept. 6 — Legally, his name is as German as they come: Fritz. To his new confidants in the radical Islamic scene and alleged terrorist co-conspirators, he was Abdullah. Fritz Gelowicz, barely 28 years old, sits in police custody, charged with leading a terrorist plot that, had it succeeded, could have surpassed the London and Madrid bombings in their murderous toll. That he is a German native, born in Munich, and a youthful convert to Islam has only made it harder for his countrymen to grasp the accusation, although his guilt is far from established. Thank you, New York Times... The picture sketched by legal documents and interviews with intelligence and law enforcement officials is nonetheless of a young man troubled by problems in his parents’ marriage, quickly embraced by forces that would twist him to their agenda. They made him not only a willing soldier but a capable leader. Ah, a "troubled young man"... “A leading mind, the one with initiative, the coordinator,” said August Hanning, the state secretary at the German Interior Ministry. “He possessed enormous criminal energy. Very cold-blooded and full of hatred.” Sounds like the German cops might disagree with the Times... That hatred, intelligence officials here say, led him on a journey through Saudi Arabia and Syria, and to a terrorist training camp in Pakistan. Ultimately, it took him to a vacation home back in Germany with chemicals to make explosives and military-grade detonators. There, the investigators who had closely tracked his movements say, the authorities finally brought Mr. Gelowicz and two suspects said to be his associates, Daniel Martin Schneider and Adem Yilmaz, to ground. That Mr. Gelowicz found the Islamic scene in Ulm, on the other hand, may have been the least shocking part of the unfolding tale. This unassuming city on the Danube River, birthplace of Einstein, has for years had a reputation within Germany as the center of a fiery Islamic movement. “It’s a combination of coincidence and favorable location” that made Ulm attractive to conspirators from the Islamist scene, the mayor of Ulm, Ivo Gönner, said. In a geographic quirk, the city sits on the border between the German states of Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria, with Ulm in the former and the sister town, Neu-Ulm, in the latter. Escaping surveillance by the police from one jurisdiction, Mr. Gönner explained, required simply renting an apartment on the opposite bank of the river. Geez, the mayor sounds real concerned... The Multi-Kultur-Haus, an Islamic center on the Bavarian side in Neu-Ulm, was the center of the movement that became known in German intelligence circles as the Ulm Scene. Intelligence officials say they know of at least four men who frequented the center, one of them a convert, who traveled to Chechnya. Only one returned; the rest were killed fighting for the jihadist cause against the Russians. Fritz Gelowicz first found Islam as a teenager. Different sources date his conversion to sometime between the ages of 15 and 18. Investigators say a German friend of Turkish descent named Tolga Dürbin introduced Mr. Gelowicz to a radical form of Islam. The Frankfurter Allgemeine, a leading German newspaper, reported that Mr. Dürbin was working at the solar energy company run by Mr. Gelowicz’s father. Mr. Gelowicz’s mother is a doctor, and he has a brother. According to the local newspaper, Südwest Presse, Mr. Gelowicz married in January shortly after the police stormed his apartment where he and his wife were cleaning at the time. At Mr. Gelowicz’s father’s company on Thursday, a man asked a reporter to vacate the premises immediately, declining to give his name. When searching for potential converts, leaders at the Islamic center focused on young people, generally 17 to 28 years old. Investigators said that some were naïve, sheltered youths, and that some had used drugs or were involved in other criminal activities. Many were children from broken marriages, including, investigators say, Mr. Gelowicz, whose parents were said to be separated. Mr. Gelowicz began to frequent the Multi-Kultur-Haus, which preaches the strict Wahhabi form of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia, far from the norm for the rest of the Muslim community in the area. “In Ulm, there are nearly 7,000 Turks and nearly 5,000 people from the former Yugoslavia,” Mr. Gönner said. “Many of them are Muslims, and they have nothing whatsoever to do with the center.” The leaders of the center exercised a great deal of control over the lives of their young charges. They gave them strict schedules and kept tabs on their movements, going so far as to issue them prepaid cellphones so they could stay in touch with them even if their families opposed it, said the parents of two children who converted to Islam at the center. Inside the center was a large library that included the works of radical preachers, a gym with punching bags, and guest rooms. For a man said to be a would-be terrorist, Fritz Gelowicz was remarkably well known to the police and intelligence officials long before his arrest this week. On Dec. 11, 2004, the police picked up Mr. Gelowicz and a friend, Atilla Selek, at 1 a.m. for setting a book on fire in front of a store in Ulm. In the car the young men were driving that night, investigators found “propaganda material,” according to court documents, including a CD with information praising the jihad, Osama bin Laden and one of the perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Shortly thereafter, an Iranian-born Kurd with German citizenship named Dana Boluri told investigators that he met Mr. Gelowicz and Mr. Selek in Saudi Arabia during the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca that all able-bodied Muslims are expected to complete at least once in their lives. He would later take part in the surveillance of the American military barracks in Hanau that refocused investigators’ attention on Mr. Gelowicz in the months leading up to his arrest in the bombing plot. In January 2005, the Bavarian authorities began to crack down on activities at the Islamic center. Mr. Gelowicz was detained and questioned after a police raid but was released because there was insufficient evidence that he was involved in criminal activity. The authorities closed the center in December 2005. In the meantime, Mr. Gelowicz had become a serious pupil. He appears to have traveled to Syria and studied Arabic, according to a certificate from a language school in Damascus included in investigators’ files. The document said he began his studies on Aug. 8, 2005. It was dated December 2005 and said his course of study would be completed in June 2006. It is unlikely, however, that he finished those studies, because the intelligence services, Mr. Hanning of the Interior Ministry confirmed, said that he was at a training camp of Islamic Jihad Union, a terrorist splinter group based in Uzbekistan, in March 2006. Mr. Gelowicz was no rank-and-file trainee. German intelligence officials say he was in direct contact with the leadership of the Islamic Jihad Union. Officials say Mr. Gelowicz returned to Germany, where he led the would-be terrorist cell that planned a series of enormous car bombs intended for targets in his country where there were likely to be many Americans. It is difficult to say how Mr. Gelowicz, after so much police attention, thought he could succeed. But he was nothing if not determined. “He was possessed with the desire to launch an attack,” said Mr. Hanning, who added that Mr. Gelowicz was among the roughly 100 to 150 Islamists considered dangerous by the German government and kept under regular surveillance. The cell tried to avoid detection, investigators said, by using public telephones and Internet cafes rather than their own phones and computers. Instead of sending messages that could be intercepted, they left one another messages saved in the draft folders of e-mail accounts for which multiple members had passwords. For all their preparations, investigators said, the plot did not succeed. Hundreds of investigators from several jurisdictions and agencies kept them under close watch for several months, and officials said they even swapped diluted hydrogen peroxide for the bomb-ready concentrated solution Mr. Gelowicz’s cell was preparing to use. |
| Posted by:tu3031 |