"It shows that the terrorist threat here isn't abstract. It's real." So said German chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday following the arrest of three men suspected of organising attacks on US targets in Germany.
They had been under detailed surveillance since December last and police were afraid they were about to mount the attacks, ahead of the anniversary next week of the 9/11 atrocities in the United States six years ago. The German parliament is about to debate whether its troops in Afghanistan should have their role extended, another focus for such groups.
Two of those arrested are German citizens, the other Turkish. They were trained in Pakistan and are associated with Islamic Jihad Union, an al-Qaeda group based in Uzbekistan. Police intercepted their network's communications and were able to watch them acquire 730 kilograms of hydrogen peroxide, sufficient to cause more damage than in the London or Madrid bombings. Their suspected targets include Frankfurt airport and the huge US military base at Ramstein.
This information comes from police and intelligence sources, based on their surveillance exercise on these men, in which some 300 officers were involved. It must be assumed to be accurate, if incomplete, and told from a particular agenda about the necessity of electronic bugging in waging a campaign against terrorism. In fact that issue has been controversial politically and with human rights groups who argue it unduly infringes privacy laws. It must further be assumed there are many more such exercises directed against other suspect groups.
The German interior minister Wolfgang Shäuble used the arrests to justify them, saying they "make clear to citizens that they can trust the security services, that they do good work and no one should feel threatened in their daily lives". He also underlined that Germany is both a target of international terrorism and now has a home-grown movement. The reasons why will be extensively debated after this affair, inevitably with reference to the country's 3.7 million Muslim minority, mostly of Turkish origin after they went there during the economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s. Germany has gradually adapted its citizenship laws to accommodate them over the last 10 years. But social marginalisation, symbolic rejection and political alienation have drawn some individuals to support extremist groups which now operate transnationally over the internet. This was a pre-emptive operation by the German security services similar to one in Britain last year. It underlines that the threat is indeed real and that international co-operation against it will intensify.