Dusseldorf - Four alleged Islamist terrorists, two of them young German men who converted to Islam, went on trial in Dusseldorf Wednesday accused of plotting car-bomb attacks on Americans. The men appeared behind bullet-proof screens at one of the most high-profile terrorism trials in recent German history.
Police claim to have foiled the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) plot by replacing bomb-making chemicals with a harmless substance and then swooping on three of the men in September 2007 after months of surveillance.
"Their motive was bottomless hatred toward Americans who they regarded at the greatest enemies of Islam," the indictment said.
On the first day of a trial expected to last two years, all four exercised their right to refuse to testify.
Federal prosecutors said the men intended to kill as many people as possible using at least three car bombs.
The group talked about attacks on US airbases or bars frequented by US servicemen in the west and south of Germany. But they were caught before they had selected where to detonate the bombs.
Before the arrests, Germany had largely assumed the risk of terrorist attacks came from foreign nationals.
But Fritz Gelowicz, 29, and Daniel Schneider, 23, both adult converts to Islam, and Adem Yilmaz, 30, a Turkish national born in Germany, were graduates of the German school system.
Like al-Qaeda, the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) is said to operate secret training camps in a lawless part of Pakistan.
A federal prosecutor told the state superior court in Dusseldorf the IJU was committed to a "global jihad (holy war)" to be waged by "mujahedin" who would seek 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.
The accused had made up their minds in IJU training camps not to be "martyred" in Afghanistan but instead to return to Germany, where they remained in frequent contact with IJU cadres.
"They were obsessed with destroying the enemies of Islam in Germany, especially US citizens," the prosecutor said.
The men are accused of belonging to a terrorist group, conspiring to murder and preparing a crime with explosives.
In a surveillance transcript produced in court, one of the men said, "If each of us kills 50 and wounds a few, that's 150 dead."
Yilmaz was warned he would be punished for contempt after he refused to stand up when presiding judge Ottmar Breidling was taking the oath from a court interpreter and also when the judges returned from a recess.
He told the court, "I only stand up for Allah." Breidling responded, "You stood up the first time we came in, although you already knew that we are not Allah."
If convicted, Gelowicz, who allegedly led the group, and Yilmaz could face 15 years in jail.
Schneider has also been indicted for attempted murder for snatching and firing a police officer's gun while the main trio were being arrested in September 2007 in the remote central German village of Oberschledorn.
That could lead to a sentence of life imprisonment.
The fourth man on trial is Atilla Selek, 24, a German citizen of Turkish origin who is alleged to have obtained 26 detonators in Syria for the plot. He was arrested in Turkey and extradited to Germany. The charges against him carry up to 10 years' jail.
The defence said it would be challenging the admissibility of intelligence reports and would show that some evidence obtained by German police from prisoners in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan may have been obtained under threat of torture.
Defence attorneys also deny the IJU exists, saying it is a term used by Uzbek intelligence for a wide spectrum of radicals.
Gelowicz's attorney told the court, "My client has no idea what the IJU is."
A federal prosecutor, Volker Brinkmann, denied that any "prohibited methods" were used before or during the questioning of IJU captives in Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan. He said the German police interviews were recorded on video.
Brinkmann also rejected claims that German government agents had joined in the plot and egged the group on, or that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had helped smuggle the detonators for the bombs into Germany.
Police say they discovered the alleged homegrown terrorists after seeing the men snooping around a US military base at Hanau, east of Frankfurt. For nearly half a year, 300 police listened in on the group.
Police claim the men went to a warehouse and bought 730 litres of high-grade hydrogen peroxide, a chemical which can be mixed into an explosive. Police then replaced the 12 barrels with a much diluted version of the substance.
