Germany holding Tunisian synagogue bomb suspect

Posted 8:53AM on Tuesday 16th April 2002 ( 23 years ago )

BERLIN - German police have arrested a person they suspect of acting as a contact in the explosion of a truck at a synagogue in Tunisia that killed 15 people, including 10 German tourists, federal prosecutors said Tuesday. Meanwhile, two Arab newspapers reported that a group with the same name as one linked to Osama bin Laden's terror network has claimed responsibility for the blast. The suspect was taken into custody Monday in the western city of Duisburg on a tip about a telephone call from Tunisia to Germany before the explosion, said Frauke Scheuten, a spokeswoman for federal prosecutors. According to a report in news magazine Stern, German police eavesdropped on a phone conversation shortly before Thursday's explosion of a gas-laden truck at the Ghriba synagogue on the resort island of Djerba. Either the driver or a passenger traveling in the truck spoke with a contact in Germany who police believe has links to radical Islamist circles, the magazine reported. A spokesman for German federal police, Gerhard Schlemmer, declined to comment on the report or to indicate if investigators had found links between the Djerba explosion and two terror cells in Germany. ``We can't judge that at the moment,'' he said. Five Algerians charged with plotting to blow up a French holiday market went on trial Tuesday in Frankfurt. Also, terrorists behind the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, including alleged ringleader and suicide pilot Mohamed Atta, once lived in the northern city of Hamburg. Tunisia has described the blast as a ``tragic accident,'' but the German government says it has indications that the explosion was deliberate. German federal prosecutors said Monday they were also investigating the case, acting on the suspicion of a terrorist attack. In front-page reports Tuesday, the London-based pan-Arab dailies Al-Quds Al-Arabi and Al Hayat said they had received a claim of responsibility from a group calling itself the Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Sites. The group, who claimed it was retaliating for ``Israeli crimes'' against Palestinians, used the same name as a group that claimed responsibility for the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. That 1998 claim described bin Laden as a ``source of inspiration'' and referred to him as the ``warrior sheik.'' The group, unheard of before 1998, was believed to be the military wing of a militant coalition dominated by bin Laden's al-Qaida and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad that was formed shortly before the embassy bombings. Bin Laden's network is accused in the Sept. 11 attack on the United States. Al-Quds did not say how it received the statement, whose authenticity could not be verified. Al Hayat said the statement was received in its Islamabad office by fax without reference to the originating phone number. Al Hayat said the Arabic statement was on stationery with al-Qaida's logo. Al-Quds said it had received along with the statement a will said to have been left by the truck driver, identified as Nizar bin Mohammed Nawar. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said Monday that the possibility of an attack reinforced the need to keep up the fight against global terror and pledged that ``the government will use all means it has to pursue anyone responsible - this will also be a matter for the international police and justice authorities, because it isn't clear where we should look for anyone responsible.'' Tuesday's arrest and claim of responsibility cast further doubt on accounts of the incident presented by Tunisian authorities. Officials there have said the explosion occurred after the truck struck the wall of the synagogue and that the driver was among the dead. His badly burned body has hampered identification, officials have said. That contrasts with accounts by German witnesses that they saw a man get out of the truck and walk away after it was parked in front of the synagogue. Neither French nor German officials would confirm a report in the French newspaper Liberation that Tunisia's president, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, had now informed Berlin and Paris that the explosion may have been an attack. German leaders have pressed for a thorough investigation and say Tunisian authorities have overcome initial reluctance to share information. Three German federal police officials are in Tunisia assisting with the investigation. ``The Tunisian government has the understandable interest that it doesn't want to worry the citizens and guests of its country, and is for that reason being cautious,'' Interior Minister spokesman Rainer Lingenthal said Monday. Ten injured German tourists who have been flown back home for treatment remained in hospitals Monday, where six remain in critical condition.

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