The Return of Al Qaeda

German government experts believe that the war in Iraq is already providing potential "motivation" for suspected terrorist plotters, whose plans are periodically uncovered by German authorities. These include plots by self-recruiting cells of disgruntled Islamic militants who might have little obvious previous contact with known terror networks.

Some suspects known to the project who have visited Iraq are believed to have "got a very good education" in jihadi ideology and tactics while there, one of the German sources said. Still, German authorities do not believe that jihadis returning from Iraq pose immediate attack threats. At the moment, said one source, known Iraq returnees appear to be "very calm."

But German authorities are taking few chances. Over the last few weeks, they have issued a series of increasingly anxious public warnings about growing intelligence indicating possible Islamic terror attacks inside Germany. At a press conference last month, August Hanning, a deputy Interior Minister who previously headed the Federal Intelligence Service, said that the intelligence picture German agencies were seeing was reminiscent of what intelligence agencies saw in the months before 9/11.

© 2007