Germany arrests 3 over alleged bomb plots

FBI: ‘No imminent threat’
In Washington, National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said President Bush was pleased a potential attack was thwarted and expressed appreciation for the work of German authorities.

FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said the FBI and Department of Homeland Security saw “no imminent threat to the U.S. domestically following these arrests.”

Germany’s elite GSG-9 anti-terrorist unit arrested two of the suspects at a vacation home in Oberschledorn, a town of some 900 people in central Germany, officials said. The third suspect fled out a bathroom window but was caught about 300 yards away, they said.

The suspects were taken before a judge in closed sessions Wednesday at the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe and ordered held pending trial.

Prosecutors said the three — identified only as Fritz Martin G., 28; Adem Y., 28; and Daniel Martin S., 21 — first came to the attention of police when one or more of them carried out surveillance of U.S. military facilities in Hanau, near Frankfurt, in late 2006.

Officials said that during the first part of this year, the men acquired 12 containers of 35 percent hydrogen peroxide solution, which can be combined with other material to make explosives — as did the four London suicide bombers who blew up three subway cars and a bus on July 7, 2005.

In diluted form hydrogen peroxide is commonly used in hair coloring and as a disinfectant, but the more than 1,500 pounds obtained by the suspects could have made a bomb with the explosive power of some 1,200 pounds of dynamite, officials said.

“This would have enabled them to make bombs with more explosive power than the ones used in the London and Madrid bombings,” said Ziercke, head of the Federal Crime Office.

Suspects set up attack
In a sign of the intense surveillance involving 300 police officers, prosecutors said that at one point police were able to replace the dangerous peroxide in the containers with a harmless solution without the knowledge of the suspects.

The containers were first kept in a garage in the Black Forest region in southern Germany. Then on Aug. 17, one of the three rented a vacation cottage in Oberschledorn under a false name, and was joined there by the other two suspects Sunday, officials said.

Police decided to move in when the suspects transported one of the peroxide containers to the cottage, where they also had taken detonators and electrical components.

Officials seized computers and were trying to determine if anyone else was involved in their activities. The three had no steady work and were collecting unemployment benefits while their main occupation was the plot, officials said.

Police also searched an Islamic information center in the southern town of Ulm, home to one of the suspects.

The arrests came a little over a year after two bombs fashioned from gas canisters failed to explode on German commuter trains. Officials said that attack was motivated by anger over cartoons portraying the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper. Several suspects are on trial in Lebanon, and a Lebanese man has been charged in Germany.

Additionally, three of the four suicide pilots involved in the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the U.S. had lived and studied in Hamburg.

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