The United States announced economic sanctions Thursday targeted at three men accused by Germany of being members of an al-Qaida-linked group. The three men were charged in September in connection with a foiled 2007 terrorist plot to attack U.S. and German targets in central Germany, the federal prosecutor's office has said. Authorities accuse them of plotting bombings on restaurants, pubs, discos and airports. Fritz Martin Gelowicz, 29, Daniel Martin Schneider, 22, and Adem Yilmaz, 29, also were each charged with membership in a terrorist organization. If convicted, they face a possible 10 years in prison.
The move by the U.S. Treasury Department would freeze any assets the three hold in the United States and would prohibit anyone from making financial transactions with them.
The suspects are accused of being members of the radical Islamic Jihad Union, an offshoot of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a jihadist group with origins in Central Asia. According to the U.S. State Department, the Islamic Jihad Union was responsible for coordinated bombings outside the U.S. and Israeli embassies in July 2004 in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent. Members have been trained in explosives by al-Qaida instructors and the group has ties to Osama bin Laden and fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar, the State Department says.
The group was considering attacks in many cities, including Frankfurt, Dortmund, Duesseldorf, Cologne, Stuttgart, Munich and Ramstein—home of a large U.S. Air Force base—which were to be carried out before parliament voted in October 2007 to extend Germany's commitment of troops to Afghanistan, German prosecutors have said. Despite their well developed plot, authorities say they were never close to reaching their goals.
Gelowicz, Schneider and Yilmaz were arrested in September 2007.