[Al Arabiya Latest] A German convert to Islam who has admitted involvement in a thwarted plot to blow up U.S. targets in Germany has now "renounced terror", his lawyer said Tuesday, asking for a lighter sentence.In closing arguments at the trial of four Islamists charged with belonging to an extremist group linked to al-Qaeda, Dirk Uden said his client, 30-year-old Fritz Gelowicz, had made a "full confession" and deserved leniency.
"In what more impressive way could one demonstrate that one is finished with armed jihad?" Uden added.
Another lawyer for Gelowicz, Hannes Linke, called for a sentence of less than 10 years, as the confession had given authorities "very valuable information for preventing terror."
"Fritz Gelowicz has given unprecedented insight into the inner workings of Islamic terrorism," Linke said.
After months of surveillance, police using U.S. and German intelligence said they caught three of the suspects red-handed, mixing chemicals to make the equivalent of 410 kilograms (900 pounds) of explosives. This was 100 times the amount used in the 2005 London bombings that killed more than 50 people.
Prosecutors had demanded 12 and a half years behind bars for Gelowicz, a member of the so-called Sauerland cell after the region where they were captured. All four have been charged with belonging to the Islamic Jihadic Union (IJU) in Pakistan.
Uden told the court that the authorities' knowledge of the IJU was "sketchy at best" before Gelowicz's confession.
Prosecutors have called for 13 years for another German convert to Islam, 24-year-old Daniel Schneider and 11 and a half years for Adem Yilmaz, a 31-year-old Turkish citizen.
A fourth plotter, 24-year-old German Atilla Selek who was arrested in Turkey, could face five and a half years' imprisonment for planning what prosecutors said would have been a "massacre".