STUTTGART, GERMANY — A U.S. intelligence intercept of suspicious communications between Pakistan and Stuttgart was the initial break that ultimately led to the arrest this week of three suspected Muslim militants accused of plotting massive car bomb attacks here against Americans, U.S. and German officials said Thursday.
The communications detected last year referred to apparent terrorist activity, the German and U.S. officials said in interviews. The German officials characterized the communications as specific and alarming. All the officials asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to discuss the case publicly.
American authorities passed the lead to German police, who conducted a painstaking investigation that led to the arrests of the three suspects, two of whom are German converts to Islam. Police here suspected that militants were communicating with Pakistan from an Internet cafe, a frequent strategy to avoid detection, but they did not know which one. So they deployed surveillance teams at several dozen Internet cafes around the city, officials said.
The stakeouts paid off when police spotted a 28-year-old convert who was already known as an associate of Islamic militants and has been identified as Fritz Gelowicz.
Arrested this week with the two other suspects, Gelowicz was described Thursday by anti-terrorism officials as the lead figure in a group that learned bomb-making at an Al Qaeda-linked training camp in Pakistan last year. The three are accused of plotting to kill Americans at or near military bases and airports in Germany with the equivalent of more than 1,000 pounds of TNT. The third man jailed is a Turk who has been living in Germany.
On Thursday, police pressed their investigation of at least seven other suspects, including several who are believed to have left the country.
About 300 investigators worked round-the-clock for nine months to monitor the alleged plotters. Using sophisticated eavesdropping equipment of their own, the Germans watched and listened as the suspected cell coalesced and amassed a stash of bomb-making materials.
When they announced the arrests Wednesday, German authorities said they had focused on Gelowicz after he was briefly detained in January on suspicion of scouting a U.S. military barracks. But in reality, Gelowicz and his associates already had been identified as an urgent threat, thanks to the American intercepts last year, according to officials in Germany and the U.S.
