By Chuck Hustmyre
October 2, 2007
VIENNA, Austria (Crime Library) — Police captured a Bosnian man on Monday just moments after he tried to sneak a backpack filled with explosives and nails into the U.S. Embassy.
Inside the backpack, police also found what they described as Islamic literature, although they did not provide any specifics.
Officials would not release the man's name but described him as a 42-year-old from Bosnia-Herzegovina, who now lives in Austria.
Bosnia-Herzegovina, part of the former Yugoslavia, is 40 percent Muslim, according to the CIA World Factbook.
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| Backpack Crime Scene - US Embassy in Austria |
When the suspect tried to carry the backpack bomb into the embassy, he set off a metal detector at a security checkpoint, authorities said. He then dropped the backpack and ran. Police nabbed him moments later in a nearby neighborhood.
"There were a lot of nails in that bag," said Doris Edelbacher, spokeswoman for Austria's federal counterterrorism office. "Had it exploded, it would have had an enormous shrapnel effect."
America Under Attack: The Eastern Front
Monday's attempted bombing is the latest in a long line of attacks against American interests around the world.
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| US Embassy in Iran |
Radical Islamists have been on the offensive, attacking and destroying U.S. targets overseas, and slaughtering Americans, many of whom were unarmed civilians, since at least November 1979, when armed Islamic "students" seized control of the U.S. Embassy in Iran.
Since then, Islamic terrorists have attacked the United States relentlessly. Here is just a sample of their overseas attacks:
- October 1983, a suicide truck bomber rammed the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 Marines.
- August 1985, a car bombing at a U.S. military base in Frankfurt, Germany left two dead and 20 injured.
- October 1985, terrorists hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro and murdered an elderly American in a wheelchair.
- April 1986, two U.S. soldiers were killed and 79 wounded when a bomb exploded inside a nightclub in Berlin, Germany.
- February 1988, terrorists in Lebanon kidnapped, tortured, and murdered U.S. Marine Col. William Higgins, who was serving as part of a U.N. peacekeeping mission.
Through the late 1980s and 1990s the attacks continued unabated:
- June 1996, a suicide truck bomber attacked the Khobar Towers housing facility in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 U.S. military personnel and wounding 240 more.
- August 1998, Islamic terrorists backed by Osama Bin Laden launched simultaneous attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 12 Americans and hundreds of locals, and injuring thousands of others.
- October 2000, Muslim terrorists, again acting under orders from Osama Bin Laden, blew up the American Navy ship U.S.S. Cole and killed 19 sailors and wounded 39 more.
And on and on it goes ...
Recent German Plot Would Have Been Worse Than London and Madrid Bombings Had It Not Been Foiled
On September 4, German counterterrorist cops, with a little help from U.S. Intelligence, swooped down on a rented house near Frankfurt. Inside were three men, two German converts to Islam and a longtime German resident from Turkey. Also inside the house were 1,600 pounds of explosive chemicals and military detonators.
According to German officials, the men were just days away from a massive terrorist attack aimed at U.S. military personnel and facilities.
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| United States' Ramstein Air Force Base Sign |
Likely targets included the United States' Ramstein Air Force Base and the Frankfurt Airport, along with clubs and other businesses frequented by Americans.
The three men have been identified as 28-year-old Fritz Gelowicz, a Bavaria-raised Roman Catholic who converted to Islam 10 years ago; Daniel Schneider, 22, a three-year convert to Islam, and Adem Yilmaz, a Turkish national in his late 20s who has been living in Germany since about 1993.
German authorities are seeking at least 10 other suspects, one of whom was recently reported to have fled to England.
According to reports, police in Germany were tipped to the plot by American intelligence agents who intercepted what they believed were suspicious email messages between Pakistan and Germany.
German police already had Gelowicz on their radar when U.S. agents linked him to the plot. In 2005, police detained him in a raid on a Muslim neighborhood. Then on New Year's Eve 2006, he was spotted surveilling a U.S. military base.
The three suspects have trained at al-Qaeda connected training camps in western Pakistan. Recently, the terror trio purchased 1,600 pounds of hydrogen peroxide — the main explosive component used in the 2004 Madrid train attacks and the 2005 London subway bombings. They had also recently acquired Syrian military detonators that German authorities believe were smuggled into Germany through Turkey.
At least 4 of the 10 suspects police are still looking for are from Turkey, according to published reports.
The group also bought three used vans in France and drove them to Germany.
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