Counterterrorism Blog

Several days ago, Germany signaled a crackdown on PKK elements there through the extradition of two men to Turkey. In return, Turkey might send a German citizen of Turkish origin, with suspected links with al-Qaeda, back to Germany.

The Today's Zaman website reported that Germany extradited Mehmet İltaş and Mehmet Eşref Kızılay, both members of the PKK, and quoted Turkey's Justice Ministry as saying that "intensified efforts and diplomatic undertakings" to return PKK members have "started bearing positive results." İltaş was wanted in Turkey for attacks on a police station and a minibus in 1991 in which eight people were killed. Kızılay is accused of killing a policeman in 1991 and had been detained in Germany since 1998.

Germany wants Turkey to send a suspect identified only as "Atilla S.," who was captured in Konya on Nov. 7. Today's Zaman reported it briefly: "German citizen Atilla S., 22, who was wanted by the Turkish Police Department's Interpol-Sirene Department on charges of joining al-Qaeda and participating in bomb making, was captured in Konya on Nov. 7." We received more information on him from Sasha Eckstein of FDD and Global Crisis Watch:

That sentence deserves more than a brief mention. Atilla (Attila) Selek lived in Ulm, and attended mosque with Fritz Gelowicz. He is wanted in relation to the Germany cell. According to police, he trained in Pakistan in IJU camps, and maintained correspondence with IJU leaders by emailing and chatting from German internet cafes under the pseudonym "Muaz." The IJU is an Uzbek organization based in Pakistan which has very strong ties to Turkey. Selek is Turkish, and his ethnic hometown of Konya is known by authorities to have IJU sympathizers. He traveled with Fritz Gelowicz and Adem Yilmaz, both now in custody, to Saudi Arabia for religious reasons in late 2005 or 2006. They reportedly met with IJU leaders there.

He was in the car pulled over near barracks in Hanau on Dec. 31, 2006 with Gelowicz, and his home was searched shortly thereafter. He slashed an intelligence agent's tire at a stoplight when he was being tracked. He also purchased an auditory recorder detecting device (bug sensor) in Germany, but couldn't get it to work. Yilmaz and Gelowicz suspected they had been bugged. According to German authorities, he helped with the bomb's initial stages, but went to Turkey to stay with family and IJU sympathizers before the cell implemented their plan. According to his account, he is not a terrorist, has never been to Pakistan, and left Germany for personal reasons which had nothing to do with the police investigation. He is in contact with Gelowicz, but they were only at the Hanau barracks together because they rode together to an out-of-town mosque, took a wrong turn, and got pulled over while trying to find their way.

Gelowicz maintains, on the other hand, that they were visiting a friend in Frankfurt, and were driving around looking for a place they could watch the New Year's Eve festivities. Either way, they circled the barracks multiple times and were pulled over for acting suspiciously. He attended a very radical mosque in Ulm, and his story does not add up. German authorities have a heavy incentive to track him down: his testimony is essential since none of the cell members in custody are talking, even with the incentive of reduced jail time for the one who snitches. Turkey is ashamed of IJU ties, but hopefully they will hand him over after Germany gave in and extradited İltaş and Kızılay.

CTB fan Timothy Thompson, a valuable CT researcher, notes the following about the town in which Attila S. was captured:

Konya is becoming a center for radical Islam in Turkey. The city was always a religious center, but previously for a rather tolerant brand of Islam. That tolerance is giving way to support for all Qaeda and homegrown Turkish Islamist groups. To the visitor to Konya, the most obvious sign of Islamist infiltration of Konya is the remarkable number of Saudi-sponsored radical pamphlets and books available for sale, both in Turkish and Arabic.