Terrorism Close Calls (2018) s01e07 Episode Script
The Sauerland Cell: Plot to Kill U.S. Soldiers
[narrator.]
A homegrown terror cell is radicalized, travels overseas, and joins the Islamic Jihad Union, all under the nose of German authorities.
[Guido Steinberg.]
German authorities in 2004 didn't really have a clue about what was happening in the emerging jihadist scene.
[narrator.]
The Islamic Jihad Union sees an opportunity in these German jihadists.
The IJU used them to perpetrate an attack in their home country.
[Breidling in German.]
From the point of view of the terrorists, Germany participated in actions against fellow Muslims.
[narrator.]
The German terrorists known as the Sauerland cell acquire chemicals for explosives.
[in German.]
With that they certainly could have built a few truck bombs.
Probably four or five.
[in German.]
It would have had the power of 500 kilos of TN and would have killed hundreds of people.
[narrator.]
With intelligence gained through the United States National Security Agency, German authorities launch Operation Alberich to foil the terror plot.
Five hundred police officials are said to have participated in this operation.
It was the biggest operation of German counterterrorism ever.
[narrator.]
True stories of the world's deadliest terror plots, with exclusive access to leading counterterrorism experts and the elite agents who stopped the attacks.
- Homegrown Terrorists.
- Jihadi propaganda.
Neo-Nazis.
This cuts across ideological lines and this cuts across nationalism lines.
The depravity of the enemy we face knows no bounds, and so does our determination to keep them from hurting people.
People's lives depend on their success.
[narrator.]
On this episode of Terrorism Close Calls, a new wave of German jihadists link with international terror networks to help facilitate attacks in Germany.
German security services launch a full-scale surveillance operation to stop the potential bloodbath.
Germany recovered from the defeat of two world wars with impressive speed to become the world's fourth largest economy and global leader in industry and technology.
While its citizens enjoy a high standard of living, securing their safety has become more of a challenge for German authorities.
[siren wailing.]
In recent years, there's been a significant uptick in terrorist activity from Islamic extremists.
Where Germany was once a staging ground used by Islamic terrorists for attacks overseas, it's now a target for the attacks themselves, like the one at the Berlin Christmas market in 2016 which killed 11 people.
Guido Steinberg is one of Germany's leading authorities on terrorism and an objective expert witness for Germany's terror trials.
Steinberg also works for the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, and is the best-selling author of German Jihad.
[Guido Steinberg.]
The danger is more pronounced today than it has been before, simply because there are so many Germans now who go and join terrorist organizations in South Asia and the Middle East.
[narrator.]
The growing movement and threat from German jihadists fall on the responsibility of German security services, which are made up of three different investigative groups known as the BKA, the BfV and the BND.
We do have very a clear-cut separation of intelligence services and police authorities.
[narrator.]
The BKA is responsible for terrorist investigations.
The BfV is responsible for domestic intelligence, including terrorism.
The BND is the foreign intelligence agency of Germany.
A strong relationship between German and United States intelligence agencies is critical in the fight against terror.
Mark Kelton is the former Chief of Counterintelligence at the CIA.
Of course, the terrorist organizations Al-Qaeda and ISIS, they don't only want to strike the United States, they want to strike Germany.
So we work closely with all of our European partners on the ground to try to mitigate that threat, and the Germans in particular, by virtue of our long and close relationship with them.
[narrator.]
Many countries rely on the United States National Security Agency for its foreign intelligence capabilities in detecting communications between operatives in the West and the Al-Qaeda core.
It's this close relationship and shared intelligence that first alerts Germany to a possible terror threat.
[in German.]
It all started with a signal that was intercepted by the NSA, the American agency that is responsible for tracking down these kind of emails.
They later passed it on to the German authorities.
[narrator.]
Peter Neumann is a professor of Security Studies at King's College in London, and Director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization.
[in German.]
It was an intercepted e-mail, sent from Europe, specifically Germany, to the tribal region of Pakistan.
[narrator.]
The NSA discovered communications between a German national named Fritz Gelowicz and operatives in Pakistan describing a plan for a potential terror plot.
[in German.]
Was only one person behind this or were more people involved? How big is this group? And what other connections do the suspects have? [narrator.]
The alert on Gelowicz quickly leads to other suspects.
It didn't take them long to identify the four potential terrorists, and that is when Operation Alberich started.
That was the codename of an operation which then lasted for nearly a year.
[narrator.]
All suspects had communicated with each other and their handlers in Pakistan via email accounts, leaving messages in draft folders.
That was standard procedure in the early years of Internet jihadism.
They would use draft folders and believe that security authorities wouldn't find out about it.
[narrator.]
The suspected terrorists are nicknamed the Sauerland cell by federal authorities because of the region some of them are from.
The Sauerland cell had four members.
Among them, two ringleaders.
These were Fritz Gelowicz and Adem Yilmaz.
Adem Yilmaz was the one who knew more about Islam in the beginning, at least he thought so.
He saw himself as the leader of this small group.
[narrator.]
Yilmaz had been born in Turkey, then moved to Langen, a small town south of Frankfurt, when he was 14 years old.
Fritz Gelowicz is a German-born convert to Islam.
I think the basic organizing principle of the Sauerland group was competition between the two ringleaders.
Number three in the group was Daniel Schneider, quite an intelligent young man, and, in contrast to the others in the group, he had gone through military training.
He had served five months as an airborne pioneer in the Sauerland region, and these units that are trained over there are considered to be Special Forces, elite units in the German military.
Number four was Attila Selek, a Turkish citizen from Ulm, probably somebody who followed Fritz Gelowicz as a sort of elder-brother figure.
We have a group of two ethnic Turks, who speak Turkish and who still hold Turkish nationality, and two converts, Fritz Gelowicz and Daniel Schneider.
Surveillance of the Sauerland four kicked in as soon as the German authorities had identified them.
They bugged their car, their flats, which is possible in extreme circumstances.
They had observation teams following them 24/7.
[narrator.]
German authorities discover that the Sauerland cell are followers of Salafism, a fundamentalist, ideological movement within Sunni Islam which follows a return to the original ways of Islam.
The Islam seminaries were an instrument for Salafists in Germany to make connections.
In the early 2000s, the scene was quite fragmented, and through these Islam seminaries, the whole jihadist milieu in Germany got more interconnected.
[in German.]
For years, the Multicultural Housein Ulm had been a focal point for jihadists in Germany, and probably one of the most important pivotal points for the jihadist scene in Germany.
This was a place for propaganda, recruitment, as well as for sending people to war.
[narrator.]
The Multicultural House became the nucleus for the cell as well as a new faction of German jihadists lead by a charismatic Egyptian preacher named Yehia Yousif.
[in German.]
He was a charismatic figure, an Egyptian preacher living in Germany for several years now, preaching Salafism.
In fact, Salafism with jihadist influences.
Evidently he had great appeal to people in this environment.
[Steinberg.]
Yehia Yousif was known to the authorities by that time, because he had supported the Jihad in Bosnia in the early 1990s.
He was the chief jihadist thinker in southwestern Germany at that time.
Fritz Gelowicz was one of his disciples.
[narrator.]
The Multicultural House published a monthly magazine called Think Islamic.
Gelowicz, Yilmaz, and Selek work on the publication.
[Neumann in German.]
Think Islamic was the main publication of the Multicultural House in Ulm.
You have to keep in mind that all of this started before the Internet became as important as it is today.
Think Islamic was the mouthpiece of the Multicultural House, an important instrument for propaganda, recruitment, and a way to transport their own way of thinking to other people.
This magazine was about Salafist content, thus religious content.
But it was also a way to introduce the readers to the fighting, so they could implement those ideas in a militant way.
[narrator.]
As German authorities investigate the Sauerland cell's connection to the Multicultural House, they discover more details describing a domestic terror plot.
[in German.]
There were many different plots.
Various ones had been discussed over time.
Ultimately they decided to attack the American air base in Ramstein.
This was a target of international importance in Germany because it was an American target within Germany.
[narrator.]
Along with the American targets, the Sauerland cell also discuss placing bombs in cars and around popular nightclub districts in Germany.
German authorities also discover that the cell had not only been communicating with Al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan, but traveled to the region as Islamic jihadists two years earlier.
Among German Muslims, the fight in Chechnya was far more prominent than the fight in Afghanistan.
[narrator.]
Ottmar Breidling, a former judge at the 6th Criminal Division at the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf, is considered one of Germany's leading authorities on terrorism.
[in German.]
Chechnya was the starting point back then.
In Western television, you were able to follow the coverage of the Muslims' big fight against the Russians in Chechnya.
And the fact that Chechnya wasn't too far away made it a point of attraction.
The things you heard about Chechnya made it also very attractive for young, combat-ready people, because of the toughness of the battles that were fought over there.
On the Internet you could watch a lot of clips of fighting in Chechnya, very well-made clips, showing how the Russians were fought against with booby traps, and how tanks were blown up.
And for young Jihadists in Germany, that had a special appeal.
[narrator.]
Gelowicz and the other members of the Sauerland cell travel to Istanbul to link up with Chechen fighters, but joining the fight is more difficult than they anticipate.
[Steinberg.]
The problem in 2004 seems to have been that the Germans didn't have any military training.
The rebel units usually demanded that somebody who would join them, would have some kind of training in order to survive the first days in Chechnya.
[narrator.]
Lack of military training isn't the group's only obstacle.
[Steinberg.]
Most German jihadists do not speak Arabic.
Why? Because Germany's Muslims are, by and large, Turks and Kurds, who do not speak Arabic.
They could not join an organization like Al-Qaeda, neither in Pakistan nor in Iraq.
That is when the group started to look out for alternatives.
[narrator.]
The Sauerland cell travel to Damascus, the capital of Syria, where they hope to find real military training, and from there follow a route they would pave for future German jihadists heading into Pakistan.
They travel from Syria to Turkey, to a city in Iran called Zahedan, 25 miles from the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, a gateway for Al-Qaeda and other extremists to travel in and out of the region.
The cell's first stop in Zahedan is the Makki Mosque.
The Makki Mosque is, as far as I know, the biggest and most important Sunni mosque in Iran, and this is where they would usually meet the handlers.
[narrator.]
The German cell are met by an Uzbek logistics officer, who offers to introduce them to leaders of the Islamic Jihad Union.
The Islamic Jihad Union, or IJU, is a group out of Uzbekistan, in 2002.
Made up of mainly Uzbek members, it also recruits many foreign fighters from other central Asian countries.
Supporters of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, they are responsible for the suicide bombings of the Israeli and US embassies in Tashkent, Uzbekistan's capital, in 2004.
The group relocated their headquarters to Waziristan, the tribal region of Pakistan, after the attacks.
[in German.]
Initially, the IJU acted regionally before it became dedicated to the global Jihad.
- [machine-gun firing.]
- [jihadists shouting.]
[Steinberg.]
Many IJU members, especially the leaders, had been trained in Chechnya in the late 1990s.
They had fought over there and they had contacts.
[narrator.]
Yehia Yousif, the Multicultural House preacher, may have been one of these contacts.
[Steinberg.]
The connection between Yehia Yousif and the Chechen Jihad was quite obvious.
The Multicultural House was a center for recruitment for Chechnya, so I still believe that this godfather of the German jihadists had a role in the recruitment of these four young people for the Islamic Jihad Union.
[narrator.]
After a year of trying to join the jihadist fight with no success, the Sauerland four jump on the opportunity to join the IJU, and agree to travel to Waziristan.
Gelowicz and Yilmaz are the first to arrive in Mir Ali, a mountainous area perfect for guerilla warfare.
Schneider and Selek arrive soon after and begin training.
[Breidling in German.]
It was classic drills in the field, as well as advancing with Kalashnikovs, bazookas, and similar heavy-caliber weapons.
We also watched clips showing skirmish drills, some of which included our friend Gelowicz, who, to put it in sportsmen terms, was on the receiving end most of the time.
They were very hard on him, to show him what real fighting was all about.
This was demonstrated on video, along with how to train in the use of explosives.
You could see instructions on how to build them.
A variety of explosives were depicted to explain which of them are the most effective, and which can be built with only a few items easily purchased in Germany.
[narrator.]
From the moment they left Germany, Adem Yilmaz, a Turkish speaker, had taken the lead as point man in the cell.
But with the move to Waziristan, the dynamics of the group begin to change.
[Steinberg.]
Fritz Gelowicz is the far more intelligent personality, and Adem Yilmaz is probably not the most clever person in the group.
And that is what the leadership of the Islamic Jihad Union in Pakistan probably realized during training.
So that Fritz Gelowicz was named Amir of this small group of plotters.
[narrator.]
With Gelowicz named the new Amir, the cell gain knowledge in explosives and weaponry, but are having trouble acclimating to the harsh conditions of Waziristan.
[Steinberg.]
The Sauerland cell had major problems surviving in the harsh tribal areas, and all of them report that they had health problems.
They seem to have caught dysentery and other diseases.
The only one who didn't have major problems with military training was Daniel Schneider because he already had some experience.
But even he had health problems, and he was seriously weakened by his inability to digest Pakistani food.
[Breidling in German.]
During the process, I got the impression that, at night, all four of them were crying in their non-existent pillows and calling for their mothers.
They weren't doing good at all over there.
[machine-gun fire.]
[narrator.]
Thousands of foreign fighters who have traveled to the region end up dying, either in battle or through sickness.
[Steinberg.]
The relationship between the Germans and the leadership seems to have been a personal one.
The leader of the IJU, Jalolov, when Gelowicz was sick, even visited him and cooked food for him and so on.
[narrator.]
Proving less than desirable fighters, the IJU see another opportunity in the German cell.
[Steinberg.]
The IJU decided not to use them in battle or only in small skirmishes in Afghanistan, but rather use them to perpetrate an attack in their home country.
[narrator.]
IJU leaders ask if they would be willing to perpetrate an attack in Germany.
[Breidling in German.]
From the point of view of the terrorists, Germany participated in actions against fellow Muslims, brethren in faith.
The way they see it, Germany's participation in ISAF missions influenced the Sauerland case.
They got involved, which was used as a justification to commit or plan terror attacks here in Germany.
[Steinberg.]
They thought about it for a while, but then decided that this was probably the best idea.
[narrator.]
The Sauerland cell will return to Germany and conduct attacks on their home turf, but first they are taught how to use industrial detonators, and how to make homemade bombs out of highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide.
[Steinberg.]
The IJU first wanted to hit an American target because of the American war in Afghanistan.
It wanted to prompt Western forces to leave the country.
Secondly, it wanted to fight its own home country, namely the Uzbek embassy here in Berlin.
And thirdly, the IJU wanted the Germans to withdraw their troops from Afghanistan as well.
That is why it insisted that the Sauerland four perpetrated an attack on American, Uzbek, and German targets, if possible.
[narrator.]
Equipped with the knowledge of how to build explosives and a list of targets, the Sauerland cell travel separately via many intricate routes through Iran back to Germany.
I think the travels of the Sauerland group show that German authorities in 2004 didn't really have a clue about what was happening in the emerging jihadist scene.
And they knew about Fritz Gelowicz, but they didn't realize that he left the country.
The problem starts with Fritz Gelowicz and the others being in Pakistan for a prolonged period of time.
That is normally something that German authorities should be aware of, especially because these young people had frequented places like Multicultural House before.
[narrator.]
It's around this time that the German authorities are first alerted by the NSA about the terror cell, and the plot to attack targets in Germany.
The BfV conducts 24/7 surveillance on the group, listening to their conversations between cell members.
[Steinberg.]
Adem Yilmaz, he talked about his vision of the attack in conversations with the other group members, and he expected to kill about 150 persons or more.
He talked about the German 9/11.
These people, and especially Yilmaz and Gelowicz, they were quite ambitious in their terrorist planning.
They wanted to attack Americans, but they also planned to attack Germans in major population centers.
[Breidling in German.]
The last consideration really pushed by Yilmaz was to commit attacks on American bars in Hanau.
Initially, there were concerns that the homemade explosives might only destroy the walls of those bars, and were not strong enough to kill as many people as desired.
And that led to the conclusion: "Let's target discotheques instead of bars.
" They thought discotheques were the more rewarding attack target.
[narrator.]
Each of the three plotters plan to park their cars filled with explosives in front of their targets, two nightclubs and the Ramstein Air Base, and detonate all three at the same time.
And they try to enhance the effectiveness although that might sound cynical, the effectiveness of the bomb by putting nails and other hard materials into the bomb itself, in order to increase lethality of the attack.
[camera shutter clicking.]
The wounds that are caused by these kinds of bombs are sometimes extremely cruel.
If you have 50 or 100 nails in your body, you are on the list of people who have been wounded, but, of course, you will have to live with the effects of this bomb attack for the rest of your life.
And this is probably something that we should have expected from the Sauerland four as well.
[narrator.]
With constant round-the-clock surveillance, members of the cell become suspicious that they're being watched.
On one occasion, Selek realizes he's being followed while driving his car.
[Peter Neumann in German.]
At one point, they seemingly lost their cool.
They stopped their car, went back to the police vehicle and slashed its tires.
They wanted to say: "We know you are watching us.
We are aware of it, but we keep going because we don't care.
" [narrator.]
Taken by surprise, the agents in the police car simply allow Selek to walk away.
[Steinberg.]
There was still a major debate going on in German counterterrorism circles.
The police would normally opt for early arrests so that nothing can happen, because you always have to expect that, after these people realize that they're being monitored, they might simply grab a knife and attack innocent bystanders somewhere on the street.
So, there is a danger to the other approach, that is more the intelligence approach.
They want to know more.
[narrator.]
Wanting to gain more intelligence about the cell and the IJU, the German investigative agencies decide to wait it out.
[Steinberg.]
The Sauerland four wanted to build a bomb on the base of TATP, triacetone triperoxide.
That's a very popular explosive among European jihadists because you can buy most of the ingredients on the free market.
Simply because you used hydrogen peroxide, which is the base of it all, you can buy it in shops, it's used to bleach hair, to bleach clothing, and so on.
The guys didn't really look like terrorists.
Fritz Gelowicz, he looks like me.
So, nobody suspected that these four were actually collecting hydrogen peroxide in order to build bombs.
[narrator.]
The cell rents a garage close to the town of Freudenstadt, in the Black Forest region, where they store the chemicals and other bomb components.
The cell is feeling the pressure from the IJU to launch the attacks.
[Steinberg.]
The IJU obviously wanted the attacks to take place, and it was not satisfying for the organization that a group that had been sent back to Germany in summer 2006 would not be ready by summer 2007.
Part of the problem, though, was the IJU itself.
The organization had promised to provide the plotters with detonators, and the detonators were to be sent through Turkey.
[narrator.]
The detonators make it to Turkey, but it's up to the cell to figure out how to get them back to Germany.
Gelowicz sends Attila Selek, the youngest of the Sauerland four, to Istanbul.
Selek is able to send six detonators to Gelowicz, but they need more.
A few weeks later, the IJU sends another 20 detonators via courier to Istanbul, but this time the courier isn't able to link up with Selek for the handoff.
They have to figure out another delivery method.
[in German.]
They were incorporated into the soles of somewhat chunky shoes.
And then you had this young man who they sent to Germany in those shoes.
[narrator.]
Alaeddine Taieb, a 15-year-old German-Tunisian boy, smuggles 20 detonators hidden in shoes from Istanbul back to Germany.
[Steinberg.]
He was contacted by Fritz Gelowicz.
Gelowicz traveled to Braunschweig, which is in the Wolfsburg area in lower Saxony.
They met, he got the detonators, and this is how the Sauerland four received the detonators.
[narrator.]
Selek stays back in Turkey while Gelowicz, Yilmaz, and Schneider make preparations for the attack in Germany.
Knowing the Sauerland cell is now armed with 26 detonators, German authorities launch a clandestine operation to switch out the dangerous chemicals hidden in the garage.
[Neumann in German.]
The German authorities, in order to avoid this dilemma, swapped the hydrogen peroxide, the explosive, exchanged it with a harmless substance, and this was the solution to this dilemma, so now the police were able to keep on observing.
[Steinberg.]
They took away the hydrogen peroxide, which was concentrated 30% or 40% solutions, and they replaced it with a solution of 3%, which is absolutely harmless.
[narrator.]
The IJU want the attacks to happen during the German debate over Operation Enduring Freedom as a way to force the Germans to withdraw from the region.
They pressure the Sauerland cell with an ultimatum: carry out the attacks within two weeks or return to Waziristan.
[in German.]
So we were observing the vehicle.
We were watching the vehicle as well as the apartment.
There were two surveillance methods for listening to and recording conversations.
On the one hand, the conversations in the vehicle, where certain instruments were installed, and on the other, the conversations in the apartment, where you could also learn a few things.
Inside the vehicle, they were talking about their next steps, what they would do after the attacks, and who would go to Waziristan afterwards.
Their future plans were pretty vague, and there wasn't an actual plan B.
Gelowicz wanted to go back to Waziristan, but wasn't sure yet how to accomplish that.
Yilmaz was also contemplating going there but preferred Chechnya, Chechnya as a destination.
Those were the topics.
[narrator.]
In order to stage the attacks, the cell needs to boil down the hydrogen peroxide, but doing this in the garage proves too risky.
[Steinberg.]
You concentrate it by cooking, and the problem is that it stinks.
So, you need a place outside of a big city, otherwise people might get aware of what you're doing.
[narrator.]
The three move the explosives to a rented holiday home in the Sauerland region of Germany, and begin the process of making TATP.
[in German.]
They wanted to find out who else was involved, and what the exact plans were.
When they were starting to build an actual explosive device, the situation changed.
Now it got potentially dangerous.
No one really knew when they would attack.
[siren wailing.]
[narrator.]
To end the surveillance phase and launch the take-down operation, a massive police detachment, along with German intelligence operatives, descend on the small town of Oberschledorn.
[Steinberg.]
People who live there are partly well-off, but it is quite far from the population centers of Western Germany, in the middle of forests.
The three were in this building.
They were starting to use huge pressure cookers, or cookers, in order to concentrate the hydrogen peroxide.
[narrator.]
Investigators monitor the cell's conversations as they boil the chemicals, and overhear them talk about something being wrong with the mixture.
[Steinberg.]
Because the chemicals didn't react in the way that they expected, because they had received some training in Pakistan, and it was exactly that moment when they realized that there was something wrong.
[narrator.]
The three cell members begin to panic, and the German police decide it's time to shut the plot down.
[officers shouting in German.]
They stormed the house and arrested two of them.
The third, Daniel Schneider, he managed to escape.
He ran through a couple of gardens until a policeman caught him.
At that moment, Daniel tried to grab his gun, he tried to shoot him, but he was overpowered, luckily.
The arrests must have been quite a spectacular sight.
[narrator.]
Once all three suspected terrorists are safely taken into custody, investigators search the country house and discover an arsenal of explosives.
[Neumann in German.]
Of course, the authorities found the explosives.
They also found a great number of detonators.
The detonators were good.
They were big.
Detonators, used by the military.
And those would have ensured a massive explosion.
You have to keep in mind, 700 kilos of explosives.
This probably would have been one of the biggest explosions in Germany since World War II.
[Breidling in German.]
Had the security forces not intervened and swapped the hydrogen peroxide to a lower concentration, the blast would have had the power of 500 kilos of TNT, and would have killed hundreds of people.
[narrator.]
Attilla Selek is arrested two months later in Turkey and extradited to Germany to be tried.
The Sauerland case catapults the IJU to the center stage of public attention.
Six days after the cell is arrested, the organization claims responsibility for the plot, and promises more to come.
The ensuing trial in Dusseldorf includes hundreds of witnesses and experts.
It is one of the largest and most publicized terrorism trials in Germany.
[Steinberg.]
So, public interest was enormous.
The trial took place in Dusseldorf, in a high-security courthouse, and it was a huge thing and it was a new experience for everyone who participated.
It was extremely interesting to watch the judge, Judge Breidling, gain the respect of the defendants.
The most interesting comment was one by a journalist, who said, "Well, now Adem Yilmaz has a new Amir, and that's the judge.
" [in German.]
The Sauerland case, or the Sauerland cell, or the plans of the Sauerland cell caused great excitement.
That was the biggest, most sensational case here, even though the plot wasn't successful, fortunately.
It was one of the most exciting trials I ever presided over.
[narrator.]
Guido Steinberg gives expert testimony about the IJU during the trial.
[Steinberg.]
There were these rumors out there that the IJU might have been founded by Uzbek intelligence, that the group perhaps didn't even exist.
It only became clear later on during the trial, this Islamic Jihad Union had perpetrated attacks in its home country, Uzbekistan, in 2004, and that this group now was building kind of an international brigade of Germans and Turks and other foreigners, in order to attack in Europe, and in other countries.
Organizations like Al-Qaeda, the IJU, the IMU, and ISIS attack us on the basis of an ideology.
They do not attack us solely because of our alleged crimes in the Middle East and in Southeast Asia.
But that is something the German public, at that time, did not know.
[narrator.]
At one point during the trial, Yilmaz tries to pass a letter to Gelowicz, but a sergeant in the courthouse intercepts the note.
[in German.]
Or he was asking: "Shouldn't we sell our story for 500,000 Euro to the Stern magazine?" There we realized: "Okay, they might be open for talks.
" [narrator.]
Judge Breidling makes an unusual concession.
He orders the defendants to be put in a cell together.
[in German.]
They were supposed to talk about it.
There was another briefing, which doesn't matter now, but they were supposed to talk about whether they should confess or not.
About 90 minutes later, white smoke came out, signaling: "Yes, we want to confess.
" [Steinberg.]
They confirmed all the accusations, and they spoke freely about their time in Pakistan, they spoke freely about persons like Mevlüt Kar in Istanbul, and so on They helped the court establish the facts.
[narrator.]
Seventeen hundred pages' worth of confessions offer up information on the cell's radicalization at the Multicultural House, how they first made contact with the IJU, how they made their way to Waziristan, and trained and communicated with the terror network overseas.
[Steinberg.]
That is why, in the end, they were rewarded with sentences, which were considered to be hard by some on the left, lenient by all observers who don't know the German system well.
[narrator.]
Ringleader Fritz Gelowicz receives 12 years in prison, while Adem Yilmaz is sentenced to 11, one year less than Gelowicz for being cooperative with the prosecution.
Daniel Schneider is sentenced to 12 years for the attempted terror plot, as well as resisting arrest, and Attila Selek is sentenced to five years in prison for his participation in the plot.
[in German.]
The verdict didn't send them to kingdom come, instead they got a second chance.
[narrator.]
Today, Gelowicz, Schneider, and Selek are all free after only serving two-thirds of their prison sentences.
Yilmaz is the only member of the Sauerland cell to still remain in jail.
[Steinberg.]
There are many cases where I would argue that the defendants are dangerous, and that they will remain dangerous in the long run, but they only go to jail for a couple of years.
And that, I think, will be a problem with the next generation of terrorists.
On the other hand, I have the impression that prison terms in the United States are exaggerated.
It's not my country, it's not my political culture, but ending up in jail for a substantial number of years, simply because you tried to go to the airport to go to Syria, I think is exaggerated.
[narrator.]
The Sauerland case is a wake-up call not only for the citizens of Germany, but German security forces as well.
[in German.]
We knew this term from England, so called "homegrown terrorism.
" The Sauerland plot and the trial with those two culprits was our first case of this nature.
This was the first we noticed that, but given the environment of those two it was pretty clear that there was more terrorism in the making.
Today, this is a widespread phenomenon.
We also see that many German converts have gone over to the IS, gone to Syria, and have now come back, bringing us, perhaps, a bigger problem in the future.
[narrator.]
In the years following the Sauerland plot, the German presence in the IJU became so significant that these exports are referred to as the German Taliban.
A 2009 video shows so-called German Taliban villages in Waziristan and German fighters conducting military operations there.
[Steinberg.]
The most important thing to do is to keep preachers from preaching.
We arrest the foot soldiers, they go to jail, but those who are behind them, who sent these kids to war in Iraq and Syria, many of them are still out there, and this is what the Germans have to do.
[narrator.]
Germany remains highly reliant on America's intelligence apparatus for its own security.
[Neumann in German.]
Germany is very dependent on information, mainly provided by the Americans.
Almost all of the prevented terror attacks in Germany and Europe were planned attacks that, in most of the cases, weren't detected by the German authorities, but were discovered by American agencies like the NSA.
And they passed the information on to the German authorities.
These people are killers, no matter what the reasons are.
The Americans, I think, show us that it is sometimes necessary to use military means.
I think they show us that it's sometimes necessary to be a lot more robust than we are, especially in intelligence affairs.
At the same time, Germany is a European nation, its political culture is liberal in a way that is hard to understand for most Americans.
We will never go the way of the Americans in dealing with terrorists abroad and in the country, but I think we should get tougher.
[Neumann in German.]
In Germany, the threat of terrorism is high.
It's probably at the highest level of the last 15 years.
This has to do with the events in Syria over the last four to five years.
Thousands of Germans went to Syria to fight.
A lot of them come back.
Radicalization is also happening in Germany.
There are lone wolves, acting on their own.
That all came together during the last few years, and makes the situation more risky than it was ten years ago, when the Sauerland cell was active.
Therefore, I believe Germany will have to face this danger for years to come.
We will have to adjust to that.
We don't have to live with this danger, but we have to deal with it and prepare for it all the time.
A homegrown terror cell is radicalized, travels overseas, and joins the Islamic Jihad Union, all under the nose of German authorities.
[Guido Steinberg.]
German authorities in 2004 didn't really have a clue about what was happening in the emerging jihadist scene.
[narrator.]
The Islamic Jihad Union sees an opportunity in these German jihadists.
The IJU used them to perpetrate an attack in their home country.
[Breidling in German.]
From the point of view of the terrorists, Germany participated in actions against fellow Muslims.
[narrator.]
The German terrorists known as the Sauerland cell acquire chemicals for explosives.
[in German.]
With that they certainly could have built a few truck bombs.
Probably four or five.
[in German.]
It would have had the power of 500 kilos of TN and would have killed hundreds of people.
[narrator.]
With intelligence gained through the United States National Security Agency, German authorities launch Operation Alberich to foil the terror plot.
Five hundred police officials are said to have participated in this operation.
It was the biggest operation of German counterterrorism ever.
[narrator.]
True stories of the world's deadliest terror plots, with exclusive access to leading counterterrorism experts and the elite agents who stopped the attacks.
- Homegrown Terrorists.
- Jihadi propaganda.
Neo-Nazis.
This cuts across ideological lines and this cuts across nationalism lines.
The depravity of the enemy we face knows no bounds, and so does our determination to keep them from hurting people.
People's lives depend on their success.
[narrator.]
On this episode of Terrorism Close Calls, a new wave of German jihadists link with international terror networks to help facilitate attacks in Germany.
German security services launch a full-scale surveillance operation to stop the potential bloodbath.
Germany recovered from the defeat of two world wars with impressive speed to become the world's fourth largest economy and global leader in industry and technology.
While its citizens enjoy a high standard of living, securing their safety has become more of a challenge for German authorities.
[siren wailing.]
In recent years, there's been a significant uptick in terrorist activity from Islamic extremists.
Where Germany was once a staging ground used by Islamic terrorists for attacks overseas, it's now a target for the attacks themselves, like the one at the Berlin Christmas market in 2016 which killed 11 people.
Guido Steinberg is one of Germany's leading authorities on terrorism and an objective expert witness for Germany's terror trials.
Steinberg also works for the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, and is the best-selling author of German Jihad.
[Guido Steinberg.]
The danger is more pronounced today than it has been before, simply because there are so many Germans now who go and join terrorist organizations in South Asia and the Middle East.
[narrator.]
The growing movement and threat from German jihadists fall on the responsibility of German security services, which are made up of three different investigative groups known as the BKA, the BfV and the BND.
We do have very a clear-cut separation of intelligence services and police authorities.
[narrator.]
The BKA is responsible for terrorist investigations.
The BfV is responsible for domestic intelligence, including terrorism.
The BND is the foreign intelligence agency of Germany.
A strong relationship between German and United States intelligence agencies is critical in the fight against terror.
Mark Kelton is the former Chief of Counterintelligence at the CIA.
Of course, the terrorist organizations Al-Qaeda and ISIS, they don't only want to strike the United States, they want to strike Germany.
So we work closely with all of our European partners on the ground to try to mitigate that threat, and the Germans in particular, by virtue of our long and close relationship with them.
[narrator.]
Many countries rely on the United States National Security Agency for its foreign intelligence capabilities in detecting communications between operatives in the West and the Al-Qaeda core.
It's this close relationship and shared intelligence that first alerts Germany to a possible terror threat.
[in German.]
It all started with a signal that was intercepted by the NSA, the American agency that is responsible for tracking down these kind of emails.
They later passed it on to the German authorities.
[narrator.]
Peter Neumann is a professor of Security Studies at King's College in London, and Director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization.
[in German.]
It was an intercepted e-mail, sent from Europe, specifically Germany, to the tribal region of Pakistan.
[narrator.]
The NSA discovered communications between a German national named Fritz Gelowicz and operatives in Pakistan describing a plan for a potential terror plot.
[in German.]
Was only one person behind this or were more people involved? How big is this group? And what other connections do the suspects have? [narrator.]
The alert on Gelowicz quickly leads to other suspects.
It didn't take them long to identify the four potential terrorists, and that is when Operation Alberich started.
That was the codename of an operation which then lasted for nearly a year.
[narrator.]
All suspects had communicated with each other and their handlers in Pakistan via email accounts, leaving messages in draft folders.
That was standard procedure in the early years of Internet jihadism.
They would use draft folders and believe that security authorities wouldn't find out about it.
[narrator.]
The suspected terrorists are nicknamed the Sauerland cell by federal authorities because of the region some of them are from.
The Sauerland cell had four members.
Among them, two ringleaders.
These were Fritz Gelowicz and Adem Yilmaz.
Adem Yilmaz was the one who knew more about Islam in the beginning, at least he thought so.
He saw himself as the leader of this small group.
[narrator.]
Yilmaz had been born in Turkey, then moved to Langen, a small town south of Frankfurt, when he was 14 years old.
Fritz Gelowicz is a German-born convert to Islam.
I think the basic organizing principle of the Sauerland group was competition between the two ringleaders.
Number three in the group was Daniel Schneider, quite an intelligent young man, and, in contrast to the others in the group, he had gone through military training.
He had served five months as an airborne pioneer in the Sauerland region, and these units that are trained over there are considered to be Special Forces, elite units in the German military.
Number four was Attila Selek, a Turkish citizen from Ulm, probably somebody who followed Fritz Gelowicz as a sort of elder-brother figure.
We have a group of two ethnic Turks, who speak Turkish and who still hold Turkish nationality, and two converts, Fritz Gelowicz and Daniel Schneider.
Surveillance of the Sauerland four kicked in as soon as the German authorities had identified them.
They bugged their car, their flats, which is possible in extreme circumstances.
They had observation teams following them 24/7.
[narrator.]
German authorities discover that the Sauerland cell are followers of Salafism, a fundamentalist, ideological movement within Sunni Islam which follows a return to the original ways of Islam.
The Islam seminaries were an instrument for Salafists in Germany to make connections.
In the early 2000s, the scene was quite fragmented, and through these Islam seminaries, the whole jihadist milieu in Germany got more interconnected.
[in German.]
For years, the Multicultural Housein Ulm had been a focal point for jihadists in Germany, and probably one of the most important pivotal points for the jihadist scene in Germany.
This was a place for propaganda, recruitment, as well as for sending people to war.
[narrator.]
The Multicultural House became the nucleus for the cell as well as a new faction of German jihadists lead by a charismatic Egyptian preacher named Yehia Yousif.
[in German.]
He was a charismatic figure, an Egyptian preacher living in Germany for several years now, preaching Salafism.
In fact, Salafism with jihadist influences.
Evidently he had great appeal to people in this environment.
[Steinberg.]
Yehia Yousif was known to the authorities by that time, because he had supported the Jihad in Bosnia in the early 1990s.
He was the chief jihadist thinker in southwestern Germany at that time.
Fritz Gelowicz was one of his disciples.
[narrator.]
The Multicultural House published a monthly magazine called Think Islamic.
Gelowicz, Yilmaz, and Selek work on the publication.
[Neumann in German.]
Think Islamic was the main publication of the Multicultural House in Ulm.
You have to keep in mind that all of this started before the Internet became as important as it is today.
Think Islamic was the mouthpiece of the Multicultural House, an important instrument for propaganda, recruitment, and a way to transport their own way of thinking to other people.
This magazine was about Salafist content, thus religious content.
But it was also a way to introduce the readers to the fighting, so they could implement those ideas in a militant way.
[narrator.]
As German authorities investigate the Sauerland cell's connection to the Multicultural House, they discover more details describing a domestic terror plot.
[in German.]
There were many different plots.
Various ones had been discussed over time.
Ultimately they decided to attack the American air base in Ramstein.
This was a target of international importance in Germany because it was an American target within Germany.
[narrator.]
Along with the American targets, the Sauerland cell also discuss placing bombs in cars and around popular nightclub districts in Germany.
German authorities also discover that the cell had not only been communicating with Al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan, but traveled to the region as Islamic jihadists two years earlier.
Among German Muslims, the fight in Chechnya was far more prominent than the fight in Afghanistan.
[narrator.]
Ottmar Breidling, a former judge at the 6th Criminal Division at the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf, is considered one of Germany's leading authorities on terrorism.
[in German.]
Chechnya was the starting point back then.
In Western television, you were able to follow the coverage of the Muslims' big fight against the Russians in Chechnya.
And the fact that Chechnya wasn't too far away made it a point of attraction.
The things you heard about Chechnya made it also very attractive for young, combat-ready people, because of the toughness of the battles that were fought over there.
On the Internet you could watch a lot of clips of fighting in Chechnya, very well-made clips, showing how the Russians were fought against with booby traps, and how tanks were blown up.
And for young Jihadists in Germany, that had a special appeal.
[narrator.]
Gelowicz and the other members of the Sauerland cell travel to Istanbul to link up with Chechen fighters, but joining the fight is more difficult than they anticipate.
[Steinberg.]
The problem in 2004 seems to have been that the Germans didn't have any military training.
The rebel units usually demanded that somebody who would join them, would have some kind of training in order to survive the first days in Chechnya.
[narrator.]
Lack of military training isn't the group's only obstacle.
[Steinberg.]
Most German jihadists do not speak Arabic.
Why? Because Germany's Muslims are, by and large, Turks and Kurds, who do not speak Arabic.
They could not join an organization like Al-Qaeda, neither in Pakistan nor in Iraq.
That is when the group started to look out for alternatives.
[narrator.]
The Sauerland cell travel to Damascus, the capital of Syria, where they hope to find real military training, and from there follow a route they would pave for future German jihadists heading into Pakistan.
They travel from Syria to Turkey, to a city in Iran called Zahedan, 25 miles from the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, a gateway for Al-Qaeda and other extremists to travel in and out of the region.
The cell's first stop in Zahedan is the Makki Mosque.
The Makki Mosque is, as far as I know, the biggest and most important Sunni mosque in Iran, and this is where they would usually meet the handlers.
[narrator.]
The German cell are met by an Uzbek logistics officer, who offers to introduce them to leaders of the Islamic Jihad Union.
The Islamic Jihad Union, or IJU, is a group out of Uzbekistan, in 2002.
Made up of mainly Uzbek members, it also recruits many foreign fighters from other central Asian countries.
Supporters of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, they are responsible for the suicide bombings of the Israeli and US embassies in Tashkent, Uzbekistan's capital, in 2004.
The group relocated their headquarters to Waziristan, the tribal region of Pakistan, after the attacks.
[in German.]
Initially, the IJU acted regionally before it became dedicated to the global Jihad.
- [machine-gun firing.]
- [jihadists shouting.]
[Steinberg.]
Many IJU members, especially the leaders, had been trained in Chechnya in the late 1990s.
They had fought over there and they had contacts.
[narrator.]
Yehia Yousif, the Multicultural House preacher, may have been one of these contacts.
[Steinberg.]
The connection between Yehia Yousif and the Chechen Jihad was quite obvious.
The Multicultural House was a center for recruitment for Chechnya, so I still believe that this godfather of the German jihadists had a role in the recruitment of these four young people for the Islamic Jihad Union.
[narrator.]
After a year of trying to join the jihadist fight with no success, the Sauerland four jump on the opportunity to join the IJU, and agree to travel to Waziristan.
Gelowicz and Yilmaz are the first to arrive in Mir Ali, a mountainous area perfect for guerilla warfare.
Schneider and Selek arrive soon after and begin training.
[Breidling in German.]
It was classic drills in the field, as well as advancing with Kalashnikovs, bazookas, and similar heavy-caliber weapons.
We also watched clips showing skirmish drills, some of which included our friend Gelowicz, who, to put it in sportsmen terms, was on the receiving end most of the time.
They were very hard on him, to show him what real fighting was all about.
This was demonstrated on video, along with how to train in the use of explosives.
You could see instructions on how to build them.
A variety of explosives were depicted to explain which of them are the most effective, and which can be built with only a few items easily purchased in Germany.
[narrator.]
From the moment they left Germany, Adem Yilmaz, a Turkish speaker, had taken the lead as point man in the cell.
But with the move to Waziristan, the dynamics of the group begin to change.
[Steinberg.]
Fritz Gelowicz is the far more intelligent personality, and Adem Yilmaz is probably not the most clever person in the group.
And that is what the leadership of the Islamic Jihad Union in Pakistan probably realized during training.
So that Fritz Gelowicz was named Amir of this small group of plotters.
[narrator.]
With Gelowicz named the new Amir, the cell gain knowledge in explosives and weaponry, but are having trouble acclimating to the harsh conditions of Waziristan.
[Steinberg.]
The Sauerland cell had major problems surviving in the harsh tribal areas, and all of them report that they had health problems.
They seem to have caught dysentery and other diseases.
The only one who didn't have major problems with military training was Daniel Schneider because he already had some experience.
But even he had health problems, and he was seriously weakened by his inability to digest Pakistani food.
[Breidling in German.]
During the process, I got the impression that, at night, all four of them were crying in their non-existent pillows and calling for their mothers.
They weren't doing good at all over there.
[machine-gun fire.]
[narrator.]
Thousands of foreign fighters who have traveled to the region end up dying, either in battle or through sickness.
[Steinberg.]
The relationship between the Germans and the leadership seems to have been a personal one.
The leader of the IJU, Jalolov, when Gelowicz was sick, even visited him and cooked food for him and so on.
[narrator.]
Proving less than desirable fighters, the IJU see another opportunity in the German cell.
[Steinberg.]
The IJU decided not to use them in battle or only in small skirmishes in Afghanistan, but rather use them to perpetrate an attack in their home country.
[narrator.]
IJU leaders ask if they would be willing to perpetrate an attack in Germany.
[Breidling in German.]
From the point of view of the terrorists, Germany participated in actions against fellow Muslims, brethren in faith.
The way they see it, Germany's participation in ISAF missions influenced the Sauerland case.
They got involved, which was used as a justification to commit or plan terror attacks here in Germany.
[Steinberg.]
They thought about it for a while, but then decided that this was probably the best idea.
[narrator.]
The Sauerland cell will return to Germany and conduct attacks on their home turf, but first they are taught how to use industrial detonators, and how to make homemade bombs out of highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide.
[Steinberg.]
The IJU first wanted to hit an American target because of the American war in Afghanistan.
It wanted to prompt Western forces to leave the country.
Secondly, it wanted to fight its own home country, namely the Uzbek embassy here in Berlin.
And thirdly, the IJU wanted the Germans to withdraw their troops from Afghanistan as well.
That is why it insisted that the Sauerland four perpetrated an attack on American, Uzbek, and German targets, if possible.
[narrator.]
Equipped with the knowledge of how to build explosives and a list of targets, the Sauerland cell travel separately via many intricate routes through Iran back to Germany.
I think the travels of the Sauerland group show that German authorities in 2004 didn't really have a clue about what was happening in the emerging jihadist scene.
And they knew about Fritz Gelowicz, but they didn't realize that he left the country.
The problem starts with Fritz Gelowicz and the others being in Pakistan for a prolonged period of time.
That is normally something that German authorities should be aware of, especially because these young people had frequented places like Multicultural House before.
[narrator.]
It's around this time that the German authorities are first alerted by the NSA about the terror cell, and the plot to attack targets in Germany.
The BfV conducts 24/7 surveillance on the group, listening to their conversations between cell members.
[Steinberg.]
Adem Yilmaz, he talked about his vision of the attack in conversations with the other group members, and he expected to kill about 150 persons or more.
He talked about the German 9/11.
These people, and especially Yilmaz and Gelowicz, they were quite ambitious in their terrorist planning.
They wanted to attack Americans, but they also planned to attack Germans in major population centers.
[Breidling in German.]
The last consideration really pushed by Yilmaz was to commit attacks on American bars in Hanau.
Initially, there were concerns that the homemade explosives might only destroy the walls of those bars, and were not strong enough to kill as many people as desired.
And that led to the conclusion: "Let's target discotheques instead of bars.
" They thought discotheques were the more rewarding attack target.
[narrator.]
Each of the three plotters plan to park their cars filled with explosives in front of their targets, two nightclubs and the Ramstein Air Base, and detonate all three at the same time.
And they try to enhance the effectiveness although that might sound cynical, the effectiveness of the bomb by putting nails and other hard materials into the bomb itself, in order to increase lethality of the attack.
[camera shutter clicking.]
The wounds that are caused by these kinds of bombs are sometimes extremely cruel.
If you have 50 or 100 nails in your body, you are on the list of people who have been wounded, but, of course, you will have to live with the effects of this bomb attack for the rest of your life.
And this is probably something that we should have expected from the Sauerland four as well.
[narrator.]
With constant round-the-clock surveillance, members of the cell become suspicious that they're being watched.
On one occasion, Selek realizes he's being followed while driving his car.
[Peter Neumann in German.]
At one point, they seemingly lost their cool.
They stopped their car, went back to the police vehicle and slashed its tires.
They wanted to say: "We know you are watching us.
We are aware of it, but we keep going because we don't care.
" [narrator.]
Taken by surprise, the agents in the police car simply allow Selek to walk away.
[Steinberg.]
There was still a major debate going on in German counterterrorism circles.
The police would normally opt for early arrests so that nothing can happen, because you always have to expect that, after these people realize that they're being monitored, they might simply grab a knife and attack innocent bystanders somewhere on the street.
So, there is a danger to the other approach, that is more the intelligence approach.
They want to know more.
[narrator.]
Wanting to gain more intelligence about the cell and the IJU, the German investigative agencies decide to wait it out.
[Steinberg.]
The Sauerland four wanted to build a bomb on the base of TATP, triacetone triperoxide.
That's a very popular explosive among European jihadists because you can buy most of the ingredients on the free market.
Simply because you used hydrogen peroxide, which is the base of it all, you can buy it in shops, it's used to bleach hair, to bleach clothing, and so on.
The guys didn't really look like terrorists.
Fritz Gelowicz, he looks like me.
So, nobody suspected that these four were actually collecting hydrogen peroxide in order to build bombs.
[narrator.]
The cell rents a garage close to the town of Freudenstadt, in the Black Forest region, where they store the chemicals and other bomb components.
The cell is feeling the pressure from the IJU to launch the attacks.
[Steinberg.]
The IJU obviously wanted the attacks to take place, and it was not satisfying for the organization that a group that had been sent back to Germany in summer 2006 would not be ready by summer 2007.
Part of the problem, though, was the IJU itself.
The organization had promised to provide the plotters with detonators, and the detonators were to be sent through Turkey.
[narrator.]
The detonators make it to Turkey, but it's up to the cell to figure out how to get them back to Germany.
Gelowicz sends Attila Selek, the youngest of the Sauerland four, to Istanbul.
Selek is able to send six detonators to Gelowicz, but they need more.
A few weeks later, the IJU sends another 20 detonators via courier to Istanbul, but this time the courier isn't able to link up with Selek for the handoff.
They have to figure out another delivery method.
[in German.]
They were incorporated into the soles of somewhat chunky shoes.
And then you had this young man who they sent to Germany in those shoes.
[narrator.]
Alaeddine Taieb, a 15-year-old German-Tunisian boy, smuggles 20 detonators hidden in shoes from Istanbul back to Germany.
[Steinberg.]
He was contacted by Fritz Gelowicz.
Gelowicz traveled to Braunschweig, which is in the Wolfsburg area in lower Saxony.
They met, he got the detonators, and this is how the Sauerland four received the detonators.
[narrator.]
Selek stays back in Turkey while Gelowicz, Yilmaz, and Schneider make preparations for the attack in Germany.
Knowing the Sauerland cell is now armed with 26 detonators, German authorities launch a clandestine operation to switch out the dangerous chemicals hidden in the garage.
[Neumann in German.]
The German authorities, in order to avoid this dilemma, swapped the hydrogen peroxide, the explosive, exchanged it with a harmless substance, and this was the solution to this dilemma, so now the police were able to keep on observing.
[Steinberg.]
They took away the hydrogen peroxide, which was concentrated 30% or 40% solutions, and they replaced it with a solution of 3%, which is absolutely harmless.
[narrator.]
The IJU want the attacks to happen during the German debate over Operation Enduring Freedom as a way to force the Germans to withdraw from the region.
They pressure the Sauerland cell with an ultimatum: carry out the attacks within two weeks or return to Waziristan.
[in German.]
So we were observing the vehicle.
We were watching the vehicle as well as the apartment.
There were two surveillance methods for listening to and recording conversations.
On the one hand, the conversations in the vehicle, where certain instruments were installed, and on the other, the conversations in the apartment, where you could also learn a few things.
Inside the vehicle, they were talking about their next steps, what they would do after the attacks, and who would go to Waziristan afterwards.
Their future plans were pretty vague, and there wasn't an actual plan B.
Gelowicz wanted to go back to Waziristan, but wasn't sure yet how to accomplish that.
Yilmaz was also contemplating going there but preferred Chechnya, Chechnya as a destination.
Those were the topics.
[narrator.]
In order to stage the attacks, the cell needs to boil down the hydrogen peroxide, but doing this in the garage proves too risky.
[Steinberg.]
You concentrate it by cooking, and the problem is that it stinks.
So, you need a place outside of a big city, otherwise people might get aware of what you're doing.
[narrator.]
The three move the explosives to a rented holiday home in the Sauerland region of Germany, and begin the process of making TATP.
[in German.]
They wanted to find out who else was involved, and what the exact plans were.
When they were starting to build an actual explosive device, the situation changed.
Now it got potentially dangerous.
No one really knew when they would attack.
[siren wailing.]
[narrator.]
To end the surveillance phase and launch the take-down operation, a massive police detachment, along with German intelligence operatives, descend on the small town of Oberschledorn.
[Steinberg.]
People who live there are partly well-off, but it is quite far from the population centers of Western Germany, in the middle of forests.
The three were in this building.
They were starting to use huge pressure cookers, or cookers, in order to concentrate the hydrogen peroxide.
[narrator.]
Investigators monitor the cell's conversations as they boil the chemicals, and overhear them talk about something being wrong with the mixture.
[Steinberg.]
Because the chemicals didn't react in the way that they expected, because they had received some training in Pakistan, and it was exactly that moment when they realized that there was something wrong.
[narrator.]
The three cell members begin to panic, and the German police decide it's time to shut the plot down.
[officers shouting in German.]
They stormed the house and arrested two of them.
The third, Daniel Schneider, he managed to escape.
He ran through a couple of gardens until a policeman caught him.
At that moment, Daniel tried to grab his gun, he tried to shoot him, but he was overpowered, luckily.
The arrests must have been quite a spectacular sight.
[narrator.]
Once all three suspected terrorists are safely taken into custody, investigators search the country house and discover an arsenal of explosives.
[Neumann in German.]
Of course, the authorities found the explosives.
They also found a great number of detonators.
The detonators were good.
They were big.
Detonators, used by the military.
And those would have ensured a massive explosion.
You have to keep in mind, 700 kilos of explosives.
This probably would have been one of the biggest explosions in Germany since World War II.
[Breidling in German.]
Had the security forces not intervened and swapped the hydrogen peroxide to a lower concentration, the blast would have had the power of 500 kilos of TNT, and would have killed hundreds of people.
[narrator.]
Attilla Selek is arrested two months later in Turkey and extradited to Germany to be tried.
The Sauerland case catapults the IJU to the center stage of public attention.
Six days after the cell is arrested, the organization claims responsibility for the plot, and promises more to come.
The ensuing trial in Dusseldorf includes hundreds of witnesses and experts.
It is one of the largest and most publicized terrorism trials in Germany.
[Steinberg.]
So, public interest was enormous.
The trial took place in Dusseldorf, in a high-security courthouse, and it was a huge thing and it was a new experience for everyone who participated.
It was extremely interesting to watch the judge, Judge Breidling, gain the respect of the defendants.
The most interesting comment was one by a journalist, who said, "Well, now Adem Yilmaz has a new Amir, and that's the judge.
" [in German.]
The Sauerland case, or the Sauerland cell, or the plans of the Sauerland cell caused great excitement.
That was the biggest, most sensational case here, even though the plot wasn't successful, fortunately.
It was one of the most exciting trials I ever presided over.
[narrator.]
Guido Steinberg gives expert testimony about the IJU during the trial.
[Steinberg.]
There were these rumors out there that the IJU might have been founded by Uzbek intelligence, that the group perhaps didn't even exist.
It only became clear later on during the trial, this Islamic Jihad Union had perpetrated attacks in its home country, Uzbekistan, in 2004, and that this group now was building kind of an international brigade of Germans and Turks and other foreigners, in order to attack in Europe, and in other countries.
Organizations like Al-Qaeda, the IJU, the IMU, and ISIS attack us on the basis of an ideology.
They do not attack us solely because of our alleged crimes in the Middle East and in Southeast Asia.
But that is something the German public, at that time, did not know.
[narrator.]
At one point during the trial, Yilmaz tries to pass a letter to Gelowicz, but a sergeant in the courthouse intercepts the note.
[in German.]
Or he was asking: "Shouldn't we sell our story for 500,000 Euro to the Stern magazine?" There we realized: "Okay, they might be open for talks.
" [narrator.]
Judge Breidling makes an unusual concession.
He orders the defendants to be put in a cell together.
[in German.]
They were supposed to talk about it.
There was another briefing, which doesn't matter now, but they were supposed to talk about whether they should confess or not.
About 90 minutes later, white smoke came out, signaling: "Yes, we want to confess.
" [Steinberg.]
They confirmed all the accusations, and they spoke freely about their time in Pakistan, they spoke freely about persons like Mevlüt Kar in Istanbul, and so on They helped the court establish the facts.
[narrator.]
Seventeen hundred pages' worth of confessions offer up information on the cell's radicalization at the Multicultural House, how they first made contact with the IJU, how they made their way to Waziristan, and trained and communicated with the terror network overseas.
[Steinberg.]
That is why, in the end, they were rewarded with sentences, which were considered to be hard by some on the left, lenient by all observers who don't know the German system well.
[narrator.]
Ringleader Fritz Gelowicz receives 12 years in prison, while Adem Yilmaz is sentenced to 11, one year less than Gelowicz for being cooperative with the prosecution.
Daniel Schneider is sentenced to 12 years for the attempted terror plot, as well as resisting arrest, and Attila Selek is sentenced to five years in prison for his participation in the plot.
[in German.]
The verdict didn't send them to kingdom come, instead they got a second chance.
[narrator.]
Today, Gelowicz, Schneider, and Selek are all free after only serving two-thirds of their prison sentences.
Yilmaz is the only member of the Sauerland cell to still remain in jail.
[Steinberg.]
There are many cases where I would argue that the defendants are dangerous, and that they will remain dangerous in the long run, but they only go to jail for a couple of years.
And that, I think, will be a problem with the next generation of terrorists.
On the other hand, I have the impression that prison terms in the United States are exaggerated.
It's not my country, it's not my political culture, but ending up in jail for a substantial number of years, simply because you tried to go to the airport to go to Syria, I think is exaggerated.
[narrator.]
The Sauerland case is a wake-up call not only for the citizens of Germany, but German security forces as well.
[in German.]
We knew this term from England, so called "homegrown terrorism.
" The Sauerland plot and the trial with those two culprits was our first case of this nature.
This was the first we noticed that, but given the environment of those two it was pretty clear that there was more terrorism in the making.
Today, this is a widespread phenomenon.
We also see that many German converts have gone over to the IS, gone to Syria, and have now come back, bringing us, perhaps, a bigger problem in the future.
[narrator.]
In the years following the Sauerland plot, the German presence in the IJU became so significant that these exports are referred to as the German Taliban.
A 2009 video shows so-called German Taliban villages in Waziristan and German fighters conducting military operations there.
[Steinberg.]
The most important thing to do is to keep preachers from preaching.
We arrest the foot soldiers, they go to jail, but those who are behind them, who sent these kids to war in Iraq and Syria, many of them are still out there, and this is what the Germans have to do.
[narrator.]
Germany remains highly reliant on America's intelligence apparatus for its own security.
[Neumann in German.]
Germany is very dependent on information, mainly provided by the Americans.
Almost all of the prevented terror attacks in Germany and Europe were planned attacks that, in most of the cases, weren't detected by the German authorities, but were discovered by American agencies like the NSA.
And they passed the information on to the German authorities.
These people are killers, no matter what the reasons are.
The Americans, I think, show us that it is sometimes necessary to use military means.
I think they show us that it's sometimes necessary to be a lot more robust than we are, especially in intelligence affairs.
At the same time, Germany is a European nation, its political culture is liberal in a way that is hard to understand for most Americans.
We will never go the way of the Americans in dealing with terrorists abroad and in the country, but I think we should get tougher.
[Neumann in German.]
In Germany, the threat of terrorism is high.
It's probably at the highest level of the last 15 years.
This has to do with the events in Syria over the last four to five years.
Thousands of Germans went to Syria to fight.
A lot of them come back.
Radicalization is also happening in Germany.
There are lone wolves, acting on their own.
That all came together during the last few years, and makes the situation more risky than it was ten years ago, when the Sauerland cell was active.
Therefore, I believe Germany will have to face this danger for years to come.
We will have to adjust to that.
We don't have to live with this danger, but we have to deal with it and prepare for it all the time.