Hamburg: Authorities discover Islamic terrorist cell
German intelligence services were yesterday reported to have discovered a new Islamic terrorist cell operating from the port of Hamburg – the same city from which the devastating 9/11 attacks on the United States were secretly conceived and planned eight years ago.
The existence of the new militant group in the city was revealed in a secret report prepared by Hamburg-based intelligence agents which was leaked to German television's investigative documentary programme Report Mainz and Die Welt newspaper.
It said the cell, which had ten members, was headed by a German of Syrian extraction, identified only as Rami M. All ten were said to have left Hamburg earlier this year to attend paramilitary training camps in the Hindu Kush. However two of the cell's members were reported to have recently returned. All of them were said to have used Hamburg's Taiba Mosque as a meeting place, the same location frequented by the 9/11 leader Mohammed Atta and his accomplices before they carried out the attacks on New York's World Trade Centre and Washington.
"It is to be assumed that these persons are absolutely prepared to carry out suicide or other attacks at home or abroad," the report was cited as saying. "The members of the group have a basic commitment to jihad and belong to Hamburg's potentially violent pro-jihad scene."
The disclosures came amid heightened post-general election nervousness in Germany about the possibility of terrorist attacks and the release of some eight al-Qa'ida internet videos in German threatening violence in response to the continued deployment of 4,200 Bundeswehr troops in northern Afghanistan.
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Source: Independent (English)
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