Hamburg: Europe is reeling under the threat of a Mumbai-style terror attack. Intelligence reports show Britain, France and Germany are on the hit list.
New terror alerts from Washington and London based on the volume of intelligence -- not a new threat.
Meanwhile British authorities are not raising the UK threat level but have raised the travel alert for citizens travelling to Germany and France.
The US has even imposed a curfew at its giant air base in Ramstein, Germany.
Behind all the warnings lie the revelation that al-Qaeda terrorists might be planning "Mumbai-style" attacks in at least five European countries.
And one of those countries is Germany.
According to a Western intelligence source Shahab Dashti, a young Iranian-born German, and several others headed to terror training camps on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
They say he travelled with a close friend, Ahmed Sidiqui, the Afghan German who was detained in Kabul in July and is now in US custody at Bagram air base.
Sidiqui has told interrogators of a plot sanctioned by Osama Bin Laden to launch a Mumbai-style attack on “soft targets” in Europe.
Dashti’s family here in Hamburg say that he was duped by radical friends of the 9/11 linked mosque, tricks that they say into going to these terror training camps in Pakistan, and they’re afraid if they speak out now, he’ll be targeted by al Qaeda.
Local journalist Albrecht Metzger has tracked radicals here for more than a decade and he takes me to the Taiba mosque – once frequented lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammad Atta.
This is where Dashti’s family say he was radicalised.
"9/11 was perpetrated from here... the people who went to this mosque have been radicalised since a long time and the mosque wasn't heard of for several years.
So why wasn’t the mosque closed down at that time?
Well, because they didn't have enough evidence to close it down.
But since Dashti left and the latest plot leaked, that all has changed – the mosque is sealed shut – closed.
These seals on the doors here are the ones put in place by federal authorities. Yes by federal authorities - on September 16, 2010, only two weeks ago.
"It was closed down in August when these people in 2009 individuals left for Pakistan to go for Jihadist training. That's when they said we have to gather all our evidence and close it down."
The Imam at the Taiba mosque is Mamoun Darkazanli. He first hit the headlines in 2001and was a friend of Mohammed Atta.
Today, Darkazanli lives in the same place he did back then. In this smart middle class neighbourhood in central Hamburg, we tried talking with him several times with no success. The 9/11 commission says he was associated with fund raising for al Qaeda. Now an intelligence source here says he allowed radicalization inside the mosque even inspired the group to go to Pakistan. However, the source adds the group was under close surveillance.
It's always the question if you close down a hot spot, what happens. These people go in different directions, it's not so easy to control them. It is also more difficult for them to meet because there is no mosque like the Taiba mosque.
This is where Hamburg’s intelligence officials have been tracking the Taiba mosque and the city’s radicals. They say they’ve never been as busy as they are right now.
As I go inside the mosque, I can’t help wondering why Iranian-German Dashti, Afghan-German Sidiqui and the others from the Taiba mosque weren’t stopped.
What’s clear from the briefing is that intelligence officials are very sensitive about Hamburg being perceived as the new centre of al Qaeda. What they say is it’s not like 9/11. What they are also saying is that every day they get new information about Ahmed Sidiqui from his American captors, and new information about his plot.
To find out more we visit Sidiqui’s family in a working class apartment building on the outskirts of Hamburg. His mother and sister say that they don’t want to talk on camera but what they do say that they are absolutely shocked to hear these things about Ahmed. They say the only things they are hearing through the media and that what he told them last year was that he was going to Kabul to start a new life with his wife. They also say that earlier this summer he called them to say he was excited, looking forward to.
Officials here in Hamburg have said they officials have said they are not aware of plans for an imminent attack but intelligence sources on both sides of the Atlantic say this was a serious plot.
And while Sidiqui may have been detained, the whereabouts of others who left Hamburg are unknown. As for Dashti, as best his family knows, is still at a terror training camp in Pakistan.
Comments
0 comment