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Operation Alberich

How the CIA Helped Germany Foil Terror Plot

By Simone Kaiser, Marcel Rosenbach and Holger Stark

Part 3: The Making of a Fanatic

Gelowicz, a native of Munich, caught the attention of the authorities a few years ago when he was seen in the company of Yehia Yousif in Neu-Ulm in southern Germany. Yousif, a trim doctor with an ice-gray goatee, was long seen as a key figure in Germany's radical Islamist scene. An occasional informant to German domestic intelligence, Yousif, charismatic and authoritarian, was the ideal mentor for young Muslims. Under his guidance, Neu-Ulm and its so-called "Multicultural House" developed into a nationwide magnet for Islamists, especially for German converts like Gelowicz and Daniel S. But as soon as the authorities began investigating, the imam left Germany, the Multicultural House was closed and the group was banned.

But convictions can't be banned, and by 2005 Fritz Gelowicz, who had converted to Islam as an adolescent and had gone by the name "Abdullah Gelowicz" since then, must have already been sufficiently radicalized that it no longer mattered whether or not Yousif was still there to guide him.

Gelowicz had previously studied industrial engineering at the Neu-Ulm University of Applied Science. He was a good but "inconspicuous student," says Uli Fieder, the dean of the university. But a fellow student disagrees, saying that he remembers Gelowicz as someone who "already had an Islamist bent in his first semester." In those days Muslim students would meet at a place called the "Café Istanbul" to discuss the Koran. Another fellow student recalls: "they talked about the passages in which it is stated that it is correct to kill Christians and infidels." Gelowicz, says the student, defended the discussions by saying: "It's the right thing."

A friend of Gelowicz from his adolescent days, Tolga D., was among those in Neu-Ulm who had similarly radical thoughts and attended the discussion groups on the so-called pure teachings of the Koran. He has been in custody in Munich since he was arrested in Pakistan in June.

Gelowicz must have begun losing interest in his studies, even though he was almost finished with the industrial engineering program. He passed his last examination in corporate management in the 2003/2004 winter semester with a mediocre grade, and then took a leave of absence for 18 months.

Gelowicz's faith in Allah and his prophets seemed to have been much more important to him than work, a career, or finding a place in the Western performance-based society.

The investigators believe that Gelowicz spent those 18 months abroad, probably pursuing religious studies in Saudi Arabia. Both Adem Y. and Attila S. were also with him in Saudi Arabia for a time.

The core of the group must have formed during this period. German investigators and prosecutors believe that it was in Saudi Arabia that the men must have begun to acquire their belief in violence, a belief that eventually turned into a scheme to kill as many Westerners as possible.

It is possible to reconstruct the stations along the way, as Gelowicz gradually slid into the radical milieu, and yet no one has been able to provide a truly convincing explanation as to his motives. Gelowicz's brother also converted to Islam, and yet authorities have never identified him as an extremist.

The father of the two converts manages a small solar technology business in which Fritz would occasionally help out. The mother is a doctor at a hospital. The parents separated early in his life. The Gelowicz family and its circumstances are ordinary by German standards -- not exactly the kind of environment that would encourage someone to go to Pakistan and join an obscure group like the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) to be trained in the use of weapons to fight a holy war.

The IJU, established in 2002, is one of many similar groups that began popping up worldwide in the wake of the attacks of Sept. 11. It is an al-Qaida copycat group, inspired by terrorist leader Osama bin Laden's idea of a global holy war. To wage this war, the IJU had originally set out to kill non-believers in Uzbekistan.

But intelligence officials became alarmed after the IJU's leader, a man named Ebu Yahya Mohammed Fatih, announced this May that his group operates "without regard to nationalism or tribal heritage," but instead consists of "the faithful from all over the world." They are concerned that the IJU has now also set its sights on Europe, encouraged by men like Fritz Gelowicz. According to a CIA dossier, Gelowicz arrived at an IJU training camp in northern Pakistan in March 2006.

US intelligence officials believe that Gelowicz received a visit from Adem Y., who may have helped set up his trip to Pakistan. Y., who made ends meet in Germany by working at odd jobs, maintained strong contacts with other IJU sympathizers in Turkey. They arranged Gelowicz's journey through Antalya in Turkey to the Iranian city of Zahedan, where he managed to slip unnoticed across the border into Pakistan.

The authorities have long suspected that Adem Y., who had links to a Saudi traveling imam in Frankfurt in 2002, helped facilitate clandestine travel in the name of jihad. Devout Muslims among his acquaintances kept disappearing: Sedullah K. from Langen disappeared on Jan. 5, 2007, followed by Frankfurt resident Sali S. in March, Ümit S. on May 10 and, on June 5, the brothers Bekir and Hüseyin Ö., both now in prison in Pakistan. At times it seemed that Langen was the site of a travel agency for adventure trips into holy war. The German interior ministry's list of radicals who traveled to the Hindukush region during this period already includes more than a dozen names.

While at the Pakistani camp in the spring of 2006, Adem Y. and Gelowicz probably discussed ways to secretly deliver messages from Pakistan to Germany. They used a Yahoo mailbox, but instead of sending messages directly, they would store them in a draft folder through which their fellow Islamists could then access the messages. But it turned out that the method they hit upon had long been known as an al-Qaida ploy. The CIA, NSA and BKA had no trouble monitoring the group's communications. Two men who went by the aliases "Sule" or "Suley" and "Jaf" kept up the contact from the IJU side.

To analyze the messages, investigators first had to decipher a complicated code. In some messages the Uzbeks in Pakistan asked whether "the gift" had arrived, and in others a "trainee" and a "wedding" were mentioned. What exactly the code words meant remained a mystery to experts at both the BKA and the CIA.