A German man who admits training in terrorism and buying nearly a tonne of explosives to attack his homeland declared in a speech from the dock on Tuesday that he would never rejoin a group affiliated to Al Qaeda.Fritz Gelowicz, 30, said as his trial in Dusseldorf concluded that he was "shocked and surprised" at the arrest three days earlier of his wife, 28, for raising funds for the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU). The court is now recessed and set to hand down a verdict on March 4.
"I want to say I will not participate in terrorist activities in future in any way whatever, and will not be rejoining any terrorist organisation," Gelowicz told the court. "That's my firm decision."
Germany has never suffered a successful attack by homegrown Islamist terrorists, but the trial heard evidence of how this nearly happened in 2007.
A defence lawyer, Dirk Uden, said Gelowicz had repeatedly urged his wife during her visits to him in prison to stay away from Islamist forums on the internet. Gelowicz and three other alleged plotters were arrested in 2007, just months after he married.
Police picked up his wife, who is a German national of Turkish extraction, on Saturday in the southern German city of Ulm. She and Gelowicz, who converted to Islam, married in early 2007.
She is accused of remitting thousands of euros to the IJU, a group based in the lawless Pakistan region of Waziristan. Two other accused, Daniel Schneider, 24, and Atilla Selek, 24, also asked for mercy in their speeches from the dock, saying they had done wrong. A fourth accused, Adem Yilmaz, 31, remained silent.
They have together provided 1,200 pages of evidence about buying 700 kilograms of chemicals to make bombs and about the workings of the IJU. They hope to receive jail terms reduced to about a decade each. The maximum term would otherwise be 15 years.