Terror suspect probed for link to Hamburg

Germans thought they were safe because of opposition to the Iraq war.
BERLIN (AP) -- A Lebanese student suspected of planting a train bomb that failed to explode had contacts in Hamburg, authorities said Tuesday, the latest link to the northern port city where three of the Sept. 11 suicide pilots prepared for their attacks.
The planned attack here stunned Germans who thought the country's vehement opposition to the Iraq war would insulate it from becoming a terror target almost five years after the attacks on Washington and New York.
The main suspect, identified by authorities as 21-year-old Youssef Mohamad el Hajdib, was arrested Saturday in Kiel, about 30 miles north of Hamburg, on suspicion of placing one of two suitcase bombs in German trains July 31.
On Tuesday, federal prosecutors said they had identified a second key suspect, while police searched his Cologne apartment as well as addresses in Kiel and Oberhausen.
ZDF television showed police leading away one man in handcuffs after one of the raids and said another person had also been detained.
However, prosecutors said a suspected bomber, whose name they did not release, remains at large.
The Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper cited investigators as saying the men were suspected of having contact with the radical Islamic movement Hizb-ut-Tahrir.
What's being checked
Authorities are investigating ties between the suspects and the Muslim community in Hamburg, where Sept. 11 suicide pilots Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah all lived undetected before moving to the United States to attend flight schools, said Manfred Murck, deputy head of the Hamburg state agency that tracks extremism.
"It seems like we do, once again, have some contacts to Hamburg, which is not really surprising," he said. "If somebody lives in Kiel and feels involved in the Islamist scene, it seems to be more or less plausible that he may have a friend or a mosque to visit in Hamburg."
Murck would not elaborate, saying only "we are working, of course, to find out what in our files can help us to identify possible contact persons."
German authorities were widely criticized for not picking up on the Sept. 11 plot, and stiffened counterterrorism laws in the wake of the attacks, though with police-state excesses of the country's Nazi past in mind, were wary of going too far.
Though there have been other terrorism plots uncovered since Sept. 11, none has come so close to success.
"I have always said we are threatened by terrorism, and the threat has never been so near," Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told ZDF television after el Hajdib's arrest, calling the case "unusually serious."
What's changed
Where Germany before Sept. 11 was seen as a relatively comfortable base for terrorists to live and operate -- but not a target -- that is no longer the case, said Kai Hirschmann, deputy director of Essen's Institute for Terrorism Research and Security Policy.
"Intelligence agencies and police are now very much trying to arrest them ... and the scene is under constant surveillance," Hirschmann said.
Germany is also seen as being on the side of the U.S. and Britain, despite its opposition to the Iraq war, for helping train Iraqi police and military outside the country, taking a large role in operations in Afghanistan, and making other contributions to the so-called "war on terror," he said.
In the failed train bombings, the evidence points to poorly trained radicals not closely linked to terrorist networks, Hirschmann said.
The bombs were cobbled together from propane barbecue canisters to be triggered with gasoline and makeshift detonators that went off but failed to ignite the gas. They were found in suitcases on regional trains in Dortmund and Koblenz.
"It looked rather rushed or amateur. There might be some connection with the Islamist network, the jihad network, but not in the sense that we witnessed in Madrid or London," Hirschmann said, referring to the train bombings in Madrid and the London subway bombings.
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