Prophet's cartoons sparked German train bomb plot

BERLIN: The publication of caricatures depicting the Prophet Mohammed triggered the failed attempt to bomb passenger trains in Germany, police said on Saturday.

One of the main suspects, Youssef Mohammed el Hajdib, who was arrested in Germany on August 16, "interpreted (the cartoons) as an insult to Islam by the western world," Joerg Ziercke, the director of Germany's federal police, told Focus magazine in an interview to be published on Monday.

He and the other main suspect in the failed plot, Jihad Hamad, who was arrested in Lebanon on August 24, were also influenced by the killing of the Al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in June, the police chief said.

"The two main suspects believed international terrorism had lost one of its chief leaders," said Ziercke.

The two men had "a certain base ideology" when they came to live in Germany, but gained more radical views "through Al-Qaeda Internet propaganda", the police chief added.

El Hajdib and Hamad are suspected of having hidden bombs in suitcases on two regional trains in Germany. In all five men have been arrested as part of the investigation, three in Lebanon and two in Germany.

The bombs did not explode because of faulty timed detonators. But the two men were serious about their plot, Ziercke claimed, and had studied the German rail timetables for weeks, possibly even since the start of the row over the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed last year.