GERMANY:German investigators are searching for 10 people who are believed to have assisted the three men arrested on Tuesday for allegedly planning a bombing campaign, reports Derek Scallyin Berlin
The continued hunt comes as Berlin's ruling coalition disagreed over the need for tougher anti-terrorism measures, includ- ing laws to permit secret online searches of computers.
The suspects being investigated are believed to have provided financial and logistical support for the three men arrested on Tuesday, a Turk and two German converts to Islam.
Police say the three men had spent most of this year acquiring chemicals and bomb-making equipment and were based in the small village of Oberschledorn, 120km north of Frankfurt.
Yesterday investigators were trying to crack a coded list of names recovered from the house, including one person suspected of being the cell's contact person in Pakistan. It was here the three men attended a training camp run by the Islamic Jihad Union, a Sunni Muslim group based in Uzbekistan with al-Qaeda links.
Police said they know the names and nationalities of all the suspects and said they did not pose an immediate security threat.
German investigators pieced together information about the alleged plot to bomb facilities in Germany frequented by US army personnel largely through electronic surveillance of the three men's telephone and e-mails.
Christian Democrat (CDU) interior minister Wolfgang Schäuble revived his proposal yesterday for laws allowing the installation of "trojan horse" spy software for clandestine surveillance of target computers.
That would require changes to Germany's robust privacy laws, a consequence of the experiences of secret police in the Nazi regime and in East Germany.
Earlier this year, one of Germany's leading courts ruled such measures are illegal and Social Democrat (SPD) justice minister Brigitte Zypries has dismissed CDU calls for changes in the law.
"We still have to discuss what is technically possible, how far one can encroach on someone's desktop and how much of the private sphere has to be protected," she said.
The SPD and opposition parties said yesterday that the successful arrests proved investigators have at their disposal already all the legal measures they need to prevent terrorist attacks.
"We are very sceptical of Mr Schäuble's demands for online searches," said the deputy parliamentary leader of the liberal Free Democrats, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger.
News that two of three suspects are German has prompted a discussion about "home-grown" would-be terrorists similar to the one after the 2005 London bombings. Under the headline "Homemade Jihad", the left-wing Tageszeitung suggested the arrests of two German suspects proved wrong the argument that Islamic extremism goes hand-in-hand with poor integration of Muslim minorities.
"People don't join the international jihad because they don't speak good enough German and can't find a trade," said an editorial. "Instead one has to ask what drove two Germans to join an obscure sect from Uzbekistan."
Bavaria's conservative interior minister Günther Beckstein waded into the discussion yesterday, calling for closer monitoring of German citizens who convert to Islam.
"Of course it is completely wrong to put all who convert to Islam under a cloud of suspicion," he told German radio. "But among terrorism suspects, it is converts who repeatedly turn up."