Police had been tracking the men for seven months and had not planned to arrest them until they had gathered more information about their contacts. But instead, the police moved swiftly to arrest the three last Thursday after microphones picked up the fact that the men were actually mixing the explosive compound for a bomb,
Police said the intercepts showed the men still debating what to bomb, with no decision made before the arrests.
The principal of the group was identified as a 29-year-old Moroccan who was in Germany illegally and who had received weapons and explosives training last year near the Afghan-Pakistan border and been tasked with bombing sites in Germany by a high-ranking al-Qaeda official.
The other two were a 19-year-old Iranian-German dual national identified only as Amid C., and a 31-year-old Moroccan-German dual national identified as Jamil S.
It was not clear what role the Iranian had, given that he was a decade younger than the others.
No further information was released. It wasn’t known if the Iranian was born in Germany or Iran.
Police said the trio was working full time on their bomb plot at the time of their arrest. They were focused on obtaining the needed chemicals and were busily surveilling possible targets such as airports and railroad stations to check out the security measures there.