THE TRIAL of Germany’s first home-grown Islamic cell got under way in Düsseldorf yesterday amid security measures not seen since the Red Army Faction trials of the 1970s.
Four men, three Germans and a Turkish national, stand accused of conspiring to build, plant and detonate bombs 100 times more deadly than those used in the 2005 London bombings.
The four are known collectively as the “Sauerland cell” after the region in Northrhine Westphalia where they were arrested in September 2007 after months of surveillance.
Authorities say the four are members of an extremist al-Qaeda associate organisation, the Islamic Jihad Union, with roots in Uzbekistan.
Two of the four men, Daniel Schneider and Fritz Gelowicz, are converts to radical Islam. Three of the four allegedly trained in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region in 2006.
The four were arrested when 600 police officers stormed their headquarters in Oberschledorn in September 2007.
Police say they caught some of the men in the act of mixing ingredients for test bombs with ingredients from 12 blue barrels of hydrogen peroxide and 26 bomb fuses – the equivalent of 550kg of TNT.
Unknown to the men, investigators had already diluted the hydrogen peroxide before the raid as a security measure.
The bomb plot was designed to cause “unimaginable” injury to US citizens in Germany, according to prosecutors.
Through phone taps, e-mail surveillance and hidden microphones in cars and holiday homes, police say they have recorded conversations in which the men discussed hiding liquid explosives in discos, rental cars and airports.
Defence lawyers declined to respond to requests for comment, but it is understood that they will challenge the legality of methods by which information was gathered and will allege that at least one of the accused was tortured.
With over 200 witnesses and experts on the prosecution side alone, court watchers expect the trial to last up to two years.
The defendants are facing sentences of 15 years in jail to life.
The idea of “home-grown Islamic terrorists” has unsettled many in Germany, which has been spared bombings like those in Britain or Spain. Three years ago, suitcase bombs on two regional trains from Cologne failed to detonate; the perpetrators were jailed for life.
