Advertisement

Sauerland cell terrorist's wife one of three arrested for al-Qaida ties

AFP
AFP - [email protected]
Sauerland cell terrorist's wife one of three arrested for al-Qaida ties
Sauerland cell member Fritz Gelowicz during their trial in February. Photo: DPA

Germany's federal prosecutor’s office said Wednesday it had charged three German citizens with supporting groups linked to al-Qaida, including the wife of a man convicted in March of a thwarted car bomb plot.

Advertisement

The trio, identified only as 21-year-old Alican T., 28-year-old Filiz G. and 31-year-old Fatih K., allegedly supplied cash for the organisations and campaigned for Jihad, or holy war, on the internet.

They were charged with "supporting the foreign terrorist groups German Taliban Mujahideen and the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU)," an extremist organisation linked to militant Islamist group al-Qaida, prosecutors said in a statement.

Two of them are in custody, while authorities are searching for the 31-year-old.

The 28-year-old suspect is the wife of a German convert to Islam, Fritz Gelowicz, who was sentenced in March 2010 to 12 years in jail for what was described the biggest terror plot in German post-war history.

Gelowicz was a member of a four-man IJU cell, known as the “Sauerland cell” after the region where the three were captured in September 2007.

They had planned to murder US soldiers and citizens in Germany with a series of car bombings, but authorities caught the men red-handed as they were mixing chemicals to make some 410 kilogrammes (900 pounds) of explosives, 100 times the amount used in the 2005 London terrorist bombings that killed more than 50 people.

More

Join the conversation in our comments section below. Share your own views and experience and if you have a question or suggestion for our journalists then email us at [email protected].
Please keep comments civil, constructive and on topic – and make sure to read our terms of use before getting involved.

Please log in to leave a comment.

See Also