The failure of two suitcase bombs to explode on separate German trains this week most likely prevented Germany from joining the ranks of London and Madrid on the list horrific commuter bombings.

The first bomb was discovered on Monday on a 120-passenger regional train that ran between Aachen and Hamm, cities located in the north-western German state of North Rhineland-Westphalia. A conductor discovered a suitcase in an empty passenger section at the Hamm end of the run and sent it to the Dortmund train station because there was no lost and found office in Hamm.

In Dortmund, railway employees opened the suitcase to try and establish the identity of the owner. To their horror, what they discovered instead was a full, 11-kilogramm butane gas tank, an alarm clock, batteries, cables and a 4.5 liter bottle filled with a gas mixture. They immediately summoned the police and fire department who emptied the train station of passengers and sealed it off until explosive experts could defuse the bomb.

The second explosive, packed in a similar-looking suitcase, was also discovered in a regional train, but on Sunday and on one that ran between Moenchengladbach and Koblenz. This lethal package was only opened on Tuesday in the Koblenz train station. Its contents were similar to those found in the Dortmund suitcase.

The German federal office responsible for investigating the suitcase bombs says both deadly devices were professionally built. Investigators believe the bombs are either part of a criminal extortion plot directed at the German railway system or an attempted terrorist attack. Since no ransom demand has been received, the 100 security officials assigned to the case are investigating the two incidents from the terrorism angle.

Expressing the shock of the German investigators, Juergen Kleis, head of the Dortmund police force's criminal department said the explosive in the suitcase his city received was capable of detonation and that there would have been many dead and wounded upon activation.

Ina Holznagel of Dortmund's Federal Prosecutor's Office was even more explicit.

"If the bomb had exploded, the train would have been destroyed," she said.

According to a report that appeared in "Focus Online", a German news publication, police suspect the only reason the bombs didn't detonate was because the gas bottles that were to ignite them were too full.

"With the Dortmund bomb, the gas bottle was filled to the brim and the gas concentration too high," one police expert told the publication. "An explosion can only result when there is also sufficient air in the bottle. It is only dangerous when there is the right gas-air mixture."

Focus Online also reported that the perpetrator(s) also wanted to feign a chemical-biological attack with the Dortmund bomb. A bag containing a harmless white powder, it stated, was found with the bomb ready to be dispersed with the explosion.

However, while investigators now possess good knowledge about the bombs, they have little to go on regarding the people who placed them where they could have caused such horrific loss of human life. Police however have distributed 15,000 fliers asking for the public's help in the investigation, while investigators, armed with photographs of the two deadly pieces of luggage, are traveling on both trains during the hours it is believed the suitcases were left, looking for witnesses who may have seen the culprit(s).

This is not the first time the German railway system has faced a bomb threat. In 2003, a suitcase containing a deadly explosive was left on a platform at the main train station in Dresden. The offender, a sixty-three year old German, later confessed it was part of a plan to extort money from a bank.

In the current investigation, German officials are also referring back to two unsolved bombings in North Rhineland-Westphalia. The first occurred in Cologne in June, 2004, when a nail bomb exploded on a street whose residents were mostly Turks. Twenty-two people were injured.

The second explosion happened six years ago in Dusseldorf near a local train station. Ten Eastern European immigrants, most of them Jewish, were badly injured. A baby also died in its mother's womb in the attack.

One German terrorism expert has stated that in comparison with the attack on the commuter trains in Madrid in March, 2004, in which 191 people died, the bombs found on the German trains appear to be the work of a single person whose work isn't as professional.

Nevertheless, Ullrich Schultheis, speaker for German security officials working on the case stated: "We are investigating in all directions and have only begun."

Friendly, inconspicuous and pious.

It is a description people worldwide have grown accustomed to concerning Islamist terrorists after they reveal their dark, secret side. So it is not surprising that is what fellow students are saying about Youssef Mohamed E., a 22-year-old Lebanese studying in Germany and the latest terrorist arrested for trying to commit mass murder against the infidel in Europe. Youssef E. was apprehended last Saturday in the northern German city of Kiel for trying to blow up two German trains with suitcase bombs three weeks ago. Ironically, he was seized at Kiel's main train station, trying to flee the city -- and possibly the country.

In a vastly under-reported terrorist attack, last July 31 at Cologne's main train station Youssef E. (German law prevents the publication of last names) and an accomplice placed a suitcase containing an 11-litre propane gas tank and gas bottles for ignition in two regional trains that carry about 120 passengers each. The bombs were set to explode simultaneously at about 2:30 p.m., shortly before their arrival at their respective destinations of Hamm and Dortmund. Only the failure to rig the bombs properly prevented by a hair's breadth a catastrophe that would have seen Germany experience a horrific London or Madrid-like commuter bombing. Both bombs were discovered when the unattended suitcases were later opened.

In the hope of identifying the suspects, a video was released to the German public last week showing the Lebanese national in the Cologne train station with one suitcase and his accomplice, who is still at large, with the other. Youssef E. was wearing a German national soccer team sweater with the number 13 on the back. He is later shown stopping at an information booth in the station but minus the suitcase. His DNA and fingerprints were found on materials concerning the suitcase that went to Dortmund. A shopping receipt and a shopping bag with Arabic writing on them were also part of the suitcase contents. But German newspapers report it was actually a foreign intelligence agency which provided the decisive piece of evidence that identified the Lebanese student.

German investigators believe that Youssef E. and his henchman in no way were acting alone and are part of a terrorist group that hadn't yet appeared on the radar screen of German anti-terrorist agencies. Monika Harms, an attorney with Germany's Federal Prosecutors Office, said that for two bombs to go off at the same time in two different trains requires good logistical preparation which leads to the suspicion that a terrorist organization is involved. After Youssef E. arrived in Germany to study in 2004, he had stayed in the state of North Rhineland-Westphalia where the suitcase bomb plot was to unfold.

The Federal Prosecutors Office also reported that the Lebanese was a student at a technical university in Kiel, but he may actually only have been taking preparation courses at a college. Before his arrest, the Lebanese student apparently intended to study mechatronics, a subject that combines electrical and mechanical engineering. His physics teacher described him to a German newspaper as "completely inconspicuous" and not that intelligent, which, he says, now makes him happy or otherwise the bombs may have exploded.

In his student residence, Youssef E. shared an apartment with four other students, three of them German. The last student, a Moroccan, is missing and is suspected of being the accomplice who placed the bomb on the train to Hamm.

Fellow students said Yousef E. prayed often, either in the student residence's basement prayer room or at a mosque. According to one student, although he wore t-shirts and jeans, he would change into long, white clothes before going to pray. A German student who shared his apartment said the Lebanese had many visitors, Arabs and North Africans, and distributed pamphlets about the prophet Mohammed. Students in the residence also reported that Youssef E. had revealed his brother had died in the recent war in Lebanon, providing a possible motive for his act of terrorism.

According to German security officials, there is as yet no evidence connecting the suitcase bomb attack to Hisbollah. They state the Lebanese terrorist group has about 900 sympathizers in Germany but they are disunited. The Essen Institute for Terrorism Research and Security reports that Hisbollah mainly regards Germany as rest and recovery area. But terrorism experts are now expressing the fear that the recent arrest may provoke a revenge attack by other Islamist terrorists.

And such fears are not without foundation. German security agencies have said in the past they don't really know what is going on in the Islamist scene in their country and have told the government they can't fight the terrorist groups with the existing laws. Ominously, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble, the man responsible for Germany's internal security, has himself warned his countrymen that they can expect further terrorist attacks and has asked for their help in the search for perpetrators. Even more disturbing for a still shocked German public regarding Islamist terrorists, he said: "We know nothing at all about whom we all have here."

By Stephen Brown
FrontPageMagazine.com