Dusseldorf - A quartet of alleged Islamic terrorists, two of them young German men who converted to Islam, went on trial in Dusseldorf Wednesday for plotting car-bomb attacks on Americans. Police foiled the Islamic Jihad Union plot by quietly replacing bomb-making chemicals with harmless substances and then swooping on the main three men in September 2007 after months of surveillance.
Before the arrests, Germans had largely seen terrorism as a crime by foreigners. But Daniel Schneider and Fritz Gelowicz, both converts to Islam, and Adem Yilmaz, a German of Turkish descent, were graduates of the German school system who then changed sides.
Like al-Qaeda, the shadowy Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) is said to operate secret training camps near Afghanistan.
A federal prosecutor told the state superior court in Dusseldorf the IJU was committed to "global jihad (holy war)" and defined its members as "mujahedin" who sought martyrdom in the fight against infidels.
He said the IJU had initially mounted attacks in the former Soviet republic Uzbekistan, then sought targets in Afghanistan and Europe.
Security was tight as large numbers of reporters showed up at the court for one of Germany's biggest terrorism trials in recent years.
Yilmaz ignored court etiquette and refused to stand up when presiding judge Ottmar Breidling was taking the oath from an interpreter, saying, "I only stand up for Allah."
The men were accused of belonging to a terrorist group, conspiring to murder and preparing a crime with explosives.
One of the men also faces a charge of attempted murder of a policeman: police allege he grabbing an officer's pistol and fired it when the crack GSG 9 police unit was arresting the trio in September 2007 in the remote central German village of Oberschledorn.
The fourth man on trial is Atilla Selek, a Turkish citizen alleged to have obtained 26 detonators in Syria for the Islamist plot.
The plotters allegedly bought 12 barrels containing 730 litres of hydrogen peroxide to make bombs. Police say they intended to plant bombs at places in Germany frequented by US soldiers.
The men allegedly contemplated setting off three bombs simultaneously to cause maximum destruction.
In a surveillance transcript published by one German newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of the men allegedly said, "200 kilograms plus shrapnel: inshallah, that will be a big bang."
Police say they discovered the "homegrown terrorists" after seeing the men snooping around a US military base at Hanau, east of Frankfurt. For nearly half a year, 300 police watched the group and surreptitiously switched the hydrogen
