Author: Nicholas Kulish and Souad Mekhennet
Publication: The New York Times
Date: September 7, 2007
[Note from the Hindu Vivek Kendra: RE "That
he is a German native, born in Munich, and a youthful convert to Islam has
only made it harder for his countrymen to grasp the accusation, although his
guilt is far from established." Similar things were said when it was
found that the terrorists who attacked London were British citizens. And the
same things are said all the time.]
Legally, his name is as German as they come:
Fritz. To his new confidants in the radical Islamic scene and alleged terrorist
co-conspirators, he was Abdullah.
Fritz Gelowicz, barely 28 years old, sits
in police custody, charged with leading a terrorist plot that, had it succeeded,
could have surpassed the London and Madrid bombings in their murderous toll.
That he is a German native, born in Munich, and a youthful convert to Islam
has only made it harder for his countrymen to grasp the accusation, although
his guilt is far from established.
The picture sketched by legal documents and
interviews with intelligence and law enforcement officials is nonetheless
of a young man troubled by problems in his parents' marriage, quickly embraced
by forces that would twist him to their agenda. They made him not only a willing
soldier but a capable leader.
"A leading mind, the one with initiative,
the coordinator," said August Hanning, the state secretary at the German
Interior Ministry. "He possessed enormous criminal energy. Very cold-blooded
and full of hatred."
That hatred, intelligence officials here say,
led him on a journey through Saudi Arabia and Syria, and to a terrorist training
camp in Pakistan. Ultimately, it took him to a vacation home back in Germany
with chemicals to make explosives and military-grade detonators. There, the
investigators who had closely tracked his movements say, the authorities finally
brought Mr. Gelowicz and two suspects said to be his associates, Daniel Martin
Schneider and Adem Yilmaz, to ground.
That Mr. Gelowicz found the Islamic scene
in Ulm, on the other hand, may have been the least shocking part of the unfolding
tale. This unassuming city on the Danube River, birthplace of Einstein, has
for years had a reputation within Germany as the center of a fiery Islamic
movement.
"It's a combination of coincidence and
favorable location" that made Ulm attractive to conspirators from the
Islamist scene, the mayor of Ulm, Ivo Gönner, said. In a geographic quirk,
the city sits on the border between the German states of Baden-Württemberg
and Bavaria, with Ulm in the former and the sister town, Neu-Ulm, in the latter.
Escaping surveillance by the police from one jurisdiction, Mr. Gönner
explained, required simply renting an apartment on the opposite bank of the
river.
The Multi-Kultur-Haus, an Islamic center on
the Bavarian side in Neu-Ulm, was the center of the movement that became known
in German intelligence circles as the Ulm Scene. Intelligence officials say
they know of at least four men who frequented the center, one of them a convert,
who traveled to Chechnya. Only one returned; the rest were killed fighting
for the jihadist cause against the Russians.
Fritz Gelowicz first found Islam as a teenager.
Different sources date his conversion to sometime between the ages of 15 and
18. Investigators say a German friend of Turkish descent named Tolga Dürbin
introduced Mr. Gelowicz to a radical form of Islam.
The Frankfurter Allgemeine, a leading German
newspaper, reported that Mr. Dürbin was working at the solar energy company
run by Mr. Gelowicz's father. Mr. Gelowicz's mother is a doctor, and he has
a brother. According to the local newspaper, Südwest Presse, Mr. Gelowicz
married in January shortly after the police stormed his apartment where he
and his wife were cleaning at the time. At Mr. Gelowicz's father's company
on Thursday, a man asked a reporter to vacate the premises immediately, declining
to give his name.
When searching for potential converts, leaders
at the Islamic center focused on young people, generally 17 to 28 years old.
Investigators said that some were naïve, sheltered youths, and that some
had used drugs or were involved in other criminal activities. Many were children
from broken marriages, including, investigators say, Mr. Gelowicz, whose parents
were said to be separated.
Mr. Gelowicz began to frequent the Multi-Kultur-Haus,
which preaches the strict Wahhabi form of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia,
far from the norm for the rest of the Muslim community in the area. "In
Ulm, there are nearly 7,000 Turks and nearly 5,000 people from the former
Yugoslavia," Mr. Gönner said. "Many of them are Muslims, and
they have nothing whatsoever to do with the center."
The leaders of the center exercised a great
deal of control over the lives of their young charges. They gave them strict
schedules and kept tabs on their movements, going so far as to issue them
prepaid cellphones so they could stay in touch with them even if their families
opposed it, said the parents of two children who converted to Islam at the
center. Inside the center was a large library that included the works of radical
preachers, a gym with punching bags, and guest rooms.
For a man said to be a would-be terrorist,
Fritz Gelowicz was remarkably well known to the police and intelligence officials
long before his arrest this week. On Dec. 11, 2004, the police picked up Mr.
Gelowicz and a friend, Atilla Selek, at 1 a.m. for setting a book on fire
in front of a store in Ulm. In the car the young men were driving that night,
investigators found "propaganda material," according to court documents,
including a CD with information praising the jihad, Osama bin Laden and one
of the perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Shortly thereafter, an Iranian-born Kurd with
German citizenship named Dana Boluri told investigators that he met Mr. Gelowicz
and Mr. Selek in Saudi Arabia during the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca that
all able-bodied Muslims are expected to complete at least once in their lives.
He would later take part in the surveillance of the American military barracks
in Hanau that refocused investigators' attention on Mr. Gelowicz in the months
leading up to his arrest in the bombing plot.
In January 2005, the Bavarian authorities
began to crack down on activities at the Islamic center. Mr. Gelowicz was
detained and questioned after a police raid but was released because there
was insufficient evidence that he was involved in criminal activity. The authorities
closed the center in December 2005.
In the meantime, Mr. Gelowicz had become a
serious pupil. He appears to have traveled to Syria and studied Arabic, according
to a certificate from a language school in Damascus included in investigators'
files. The document said he began his studies on Aug. 8, 2005. It was dated
December 2005 and said his course of study would be completed in June 2006.
It is unlikely, however, that he finished
those studies, because the intelligence services, Mr. Hanning of the Interior
Ministry confirmed, said that he was at a training camp of Islamic Jihad Union,
a terrorist splinter group based in Uzbekistan, in March 2006. Mr. Gelowicz
was no rank-and-file trainee. German intelligence officials say he was in
direct contact with the leadership of the Islamic Jihad Union.
Officials say Mr. Gelowicz returned to Germany,
where he led the would-be terrorist cell that planned a series of enormous
car bombs intended for targets in his country where there were likely to be
many Americans. It is difficult to say how Mr. Gelowicz, after so much police
attention, thought he could succeed.
But he was nothing if not determined. "He
was possessed with the desire to launch an attack," said Mr. Hanning,
who added that Mr. Gelowicz was among the roughly 100 to 150 Islamists considered
dangerous by the German government and kept under regular surveillance.
The cell tried to avoid detection, investigators
said, by using public telephones and Internet cafes rather than their own
phones and computers. Instead of sending messages that could be intercepted,
they left one another messages saved in the draft folders of e-mail accounts
for which multiple members had passwords.
For all their preparations, investigators
said, the plot did not succeed. Hundreds of investigators from several jurisdictions
and agencies kept them under close watch for several months, and officials
said they even swapped diluted hydrogen peroxide for the bomb-ready concentrated
solution Mr. Gelowicz's cell was preparing to use.
Sarah Plass contributed reporting from Frankfurt,
and Victor Homola from Berlin.
