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Journalism of Courage
With Germans already on alert about what the authorities call a concrete terror threat to their country,German police Thursday headed to the African nation of Namibia after police there found a suitcase with a fuse,clock and wires in the capitals airport and inspected the luggage of a plane bound for Munich.
A statement by the Namibia Airports Company said that a suspicious parcel had been found in the luggage screening area in the airport at Windhoek,and that as a result Air Berlin Flight 7377 was delayed and its 296 passengers and 10 crew members sent back to the terminal and asked to identify their luggage. The flight eventually took off with its passengers and crew,but its cargo was left behind,the statement said. The plane arrived in Munich Thursday morning.
A lot speaks for the idea that the piece of luggage was supposed to be transported on a plane that was to fly to Munich, he said in Hamburg,according to Associated Press.
Germany had dispatched heavily armed police officers and bomb-sniffing dogs on Wednesday to its train stations,airports and key landmarks. In a hastily-called news conference in Berlin on Wednesday,Maizière said the government had concrete indications of a series of attacks planned for the end of November,and German,Pakistani and American officials offered similar accounts of intelligence pointing to imminent attacks by terrorists trained in Pakistan or Afghanistan.
Concern about the possibility of international flights being targeted rose last month when two mail bombs were discovered while being sent from Yemen to the US. One of them went through a German airport before being found in Britain.
In Washington,an American counter-terrorism official detailed the intelligence behind a warning issued in October to Americans traveling in Europe. He said that about 25 fighters affiliated with Al Qaeda,organised into cells of three to five members,had been planning commando attacks in Britain,France and Germany. Since then,the official said,about 10 of the fighters have been killed or captured,most of them by drone strikes in Pakistan.
A Pakistani official said drone strikes in September and October were believed to have killed European recruits directly involved in various plots,possibly including attacks in Germany and Britain. But he said several such plotters were believed to be alive.
A high-ranking German intelligence official said reports had been streaming in for months that teams might be heading to Germany for a Mumbai-style or other strikes.
The situation has developed over the past weeks and months, the official said. There were new messages almost everyday. The number of messages increased and concentrated on Germany.
