Karlsruhe, Germany - Sweden has extradited a 32-year-old
Islamist, Thaer A, to Germany on charges that he is the chief fund-
raiser of a new terrorist group planning to operate in Sudan, German
prosecutors said Thursday.
A, who is Jordanian, was arrested March 19 in Sweden and flown to
Germany on Wednesday. A German federal magistrate remanded him in
custody the following day.
Investigators say he is one of five founders of the new group, set
up at the bidding of al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, and was
appointed to organize money transfers.
Germany arrested another founder, Redouane e-H, last July on
separate charges of recruiting in Europe for a Qaeda-linked group
mounting terrorist attacks in Iraq.
They believe e-H was an associate of the plotters of the September
11, 2001 attacks too.
A 36-year-old man of Moroccan origin who lived in Kiel, northern
Germany until his arrest, e-H is alleged to have transmitted messages
to Said Bahaji, one of the eight alleged 9-11 plotters from Hamburg.
Bahaji is at large.
The Swedes are holding a third alleged founder, a 24-year-old
Moroccan, but he has appealed against extradition and cannot be moved
before a verdict is reached. Police did not name the group.
German police were monitoring the men online as they plotted in an
internet chat room last June and July, the prosecutor's office said.
It is a crime in Germany to set up a terrorist group, even if it does
not attack Germany.
The five aimed to open a new 'front' in Sudan to wage jihad or
holy war against 'Crusaders,' an Islamist term for what are perceived
as threatening western nations.
E-H, who has contacts in Syria, Algeria and Iraq, was the
communications officer of the group, prosecutors said.
Meanwhile fresh details emerged about an Islamist attempt last
year to blow up two German trains, with a claim that there may have
been a third plotter with al-Qaeda links.
Previously it was thought the July 31 plot, which failed when the
bombs did not explode, was a 'freelance' attack by two Lebanese
students who were arrested soon after.
The news magazine Der Spiegel said it would appear Saturday with a
report that the two set the bombs as an initiation test for Khaled
Ibrahim al-Hajdib, the Sweden-based brother of one of the accused.
One of the men, Jihad Hamad, goes on trial in Beirut next week.
The other, Youssef al-Hajdib, is in custody in Germany and likely to
be indicted this summer.
The magazine said Youssef al-Hajdib used the term 'initiation
test' in an e-mail. Both students had hoped to go to Iraq to fight.
Spiegel said Swedish investigators believe Ibrahim was recruiting
fighters for Iraq and fund-raising. German prosecutors believed he
might have known of the plot or have even commissioned it.
It said had been arrested in Lebanon, where 'sources' linked him
to al-Qaeda. Spiegel said Ibrahim had prepared a will, found in his
younger brother's German lodgings, in which he termed himself a
mujahid, or jihad warrior.
Spiegel said Hamad had said in a jail interview that the plot had
been a mistake and he thanked God the suitcase bombs had not exploded
on the two German cross-country trains.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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