German Politician Calls for Tougher Anti-Terror Law
July 5, 2003
Shadi Mohammed Mustafa Abdalla, accused of planning terrorist attacks in Düsseldorf and Berlin, admitted to his guilt during a high-profile terrorist trial in Düsseldorf’s higher regional court on Friday. A former temporary bodyguard of Osama bin Laden, Abdalla told the court that his targets included the Jewish Museum in Berlin and a Jewish-run discotheque in downtown Düsseldorf.
Although he told the court no concrete date had been set for the attacks, police in the two cities have taken extra careful precaution to protect Jewish buildings.
Abdalla, who was arrested in April last year along with some of his colleagues after he ordered a gun and hand grenades through a middleman, stands accused of membership in the al Tawhid terrorist organization, forging his passport and planning terrorist attacks.
The 26-year-old Jordanian of Palestinian origin told the court he had undergone training in Afghanistan in making bombs and carrying out terrorist attacks and that he had concluded the session "a hundred percent successfully."
Justification for fears
Bavarian State Interior Minister Günther Beckstein said on Saturday that Abdalla’s admittance to guilt justifies fears by authorities of terrorist attacks in Germany. "It’s now clear that the worries security authorities had about attacks in Germany by Islamic militants were not the stuff of crazy fantasies," he told the Rheinische Post newspaper in Düsseldorf.
Without a doubt, Abdalla’s comments have demonstrated that Germany is not only a place for terrorists to hide out and prepare their attacks, but rather is itself the target, Beckstein said. For this reason, the interior minister from the conservative Christian Social Union insisted that Germany needs "laws that will make it easier to deport people who are proven to be dangerous."
German authorities have arrested and detained numerous suspected Islamic militants and cracked down on fundamentalist groups operating in Germany since it was revealed that three of the suicide hijackers involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S. had lived for years in Hamburg.