Germans stunned by terror plot
2007-09-09 22:02
Berlin - They grew up as middle-class Germans with the ordinary names Fritz and Daniel. They had, by and large, sound family backgrounds and attended good schools. They even once played American football and basketball.
But somewhere along the line - according to a portrait of the two Germans that has emerged in local media reports since their arrest - Fritz Gelowicz and Daniel Schneider went off the usual track and became Islamist militants.
Their alleged plan to launch massive bomb attacks on US targets in Germany was foiled by police on Tuesday. They were arrested along with a Turkish man raised in Germany, Adem Yilmaz, and police said they had enough material to make bombs with a force equal to 550kg of TNT.
Allegations of their plot have stunned Germany, a country
largely spared the violence from Islamist militants that has hit
the United States, Britain and Spain.
It has been hard for Germans to fathom why anyone raised in
their prosperous country might choose to follow the path of
Mohammed Atta, a radical Arab student who lived inconspicuously
as a student in Hamburg before leading the 9/11 hijacked plane
attacks on the United States in 2001.
"A country is struggling to understand why - and Germans
are asking themselves if they could have possibly known what was
happening," wrote Der Tagesspiegel on Sunday.
Quarterback to ringleader
Gelowicz, who prosecutors have said headed the German cell,
had earlier demonstrated his leadership skills as the
quarterback of an American football club team called the Neu-Ulm
Barracudas, according to Bild am Sonntag newspaper.
Gelowicz, 28, excelled in the US sport that is played in only scattered parts of a country where soccer dominates. He made it into Bavaria's 1995 all-state team.
Born in Munich, Gelowicz moved to Ulm as a child and his parents separated when he was 15.
"About 10 years ago I found out Fritz had let himself be circumcised," his father Manfred was quoted telling Focus magazine. "At that time I didn't think he was Muslim. I thought it was all something he would just grow out of."
Gelowicz is believed to have converted to Islam as a teenager and began calling himself Abdullah Gelowicz.
Gelowicz studied industrial engineering at the technical university in Neu-Ulm but dropped out shortly before finishing in 2004. Newspapers said he had been a good student.
Birthday in jail
Schneider, who turned 22 in custody on Sunday, was once a standout basketball player in his hometown. He later trained as munitions expert as a recruit in the German army.
"Daniel was a talented young player and scored an average of
25 points a game," Bild am Sonntag quoted a former coach as
saying.
He dropped out of high school a year before graduating
because he did not want to be taught by women any more,
according to the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. He converted to
Islam at the age of 19 in 2003.
After military service, he studied the Koran in Pakistan before returning to his home town of Herrensohr in February 2007, der Tagesspiegel said.
Yilmaz, 28, was born in Turkey. He moved to Germany as a
youth with his parents. He grew up in Langen, a town in Hessen,
and after finishing school received state unemployment support.
He had worked as a ticket inspector on local buses at one point.
"He was completely normal, a nice boy," said Horst Boenig,
head of the KSV Langen sports club where Yilmaz worked out.