German Police Arrest Islamists With Uk Links

Police special units swooped on addresses in several parts of Germany yesterday, arresting 11 members of an Islamic fundamentalist movement that prosecutors said was bent on global jihad and had its European base in Britain.

Investigators said the group was suspected of planning attacks in Germany, but they could not confirm that it was linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.

The raids took place on the day a defendant in the trial of alleged Islamist terrorists in Frankfurt told the court that he and his associates had been planning to blow up a synagogue, not a Christmas market as investigators had assumed.

Aeurobi Beandali, one of the five accused of planning a bomb in the French city of Strasbourg at the end of 2000 or the beginning of 2001, admitted that they were plotting an attack, but said the explosion would have been carried out in such a way as to avoid casualties.

He told the court that he had spent nine months in an Afghan training camp, but claimed that it had had nothing to do with al-Qaida.

He said he had paid for his own training and even bought the bullets he fired.

Another of the five, Lamine Maroni, launched a tirade at the proceedings - the second such outburst by a defendant in two weeks - by heaping abuse on the court and describing his counsel as a "devil."

The official account of yesterday's police raids, however, raised several unanswered questions.

A statement from the office of Germany's chief anti- terrorist prosecutor, Kay Nehm, said the operation had been aimed at a German cell of the Sunni-Palestinian al-Tawhid movement.

The statement added that the headquarters of the al-Tawhid movement in Europe was "understood to be in Great Britain."

Mr Nehm said later that some of those detained had trained in Afghanistan, but added that it was hard to say if they had links to al-Qaida.

"It [al-Tawhid] is involved in aggressive Muslim fundamentalism," he said. "We tried to pull out the roots this morning."

The statement from his office said the German cell was "largely independent" but "tied up in an international conspiratorial network." Its initial focus was on supplying logistical support to "Afghan fighters."

"The cell in Germany was until now predominantly involved in forging passports and travel documents, collecting money and smuggling 'fighters'," said the statement.

But it added there were "also indications this cell had begun to plan attacks in Germany."

Mr Nehm said the group was centred on a 36-year-old Iraqi-born Palestinian identified only as Yaser H, in the western city of Essen. He described al-Tawhid as having been founded in Jordan.

It was not immediately clear whether it had any connection to either of two other groups which have the same name.

One forms part of the hardline Kurdish fundamentalist Jund al-Islam, or "soldiers of Islam" movement.

This group was founded last September with the blessing and support of Osama bin Laden, according to a report in a London-based Arab language newspaper at the time.

The other well-known al-Tawhid movement was founded in 1982 in Lebanon. It was active in the late 1980s, fighting the Israelis and their allies in the South Lebanese Army.

Yesterday's police raids focused on 19 separate locations in Berlin, Munich, Essen, and Düsseldorf.