Bin Laden guard got German attack order after 9/11

A Jordanian man on trial in Germany on charges of belonging to a terror group said yesterday he got an order to attack German Jewish targets just after the September 11 suicide attacks on the United States.

Shadi Mohammed Mustafa Abdalla told a German court he received a coded message - "You are going to get married" - to launch an attack on September 12, 2001.

Abdalla, who said he served as a bodyguard to Osama bin Laden before rejecting violence, has already told the court he had selected a Jewish community centre in Berlin and a Duesseldorf disco owned by a Jewish businessman for attacks.

Federal prosecutors accuse the Jordanian citizen of belonging to Al Tawhid, a militant Sunni Palestinian group that the United States says has links to al Qaeda, and helping to plot grenade attacks on targets in Germany.

Abdalla said the leader of Al Tawhid travelled to Afghanistan on September 5, 2001, and returned to Germany on September 12. Abdalla said the leader told him: "You are going to get married" - the code to carry out the attack.

Abdalla's cooperation should shorten the potential 10-year sentence he faces for belonging to a terrorist group and his testimony is also being used against four other suspected Al Tawhid members.

Abdalla told the court the group had considered using a car bomb for their attacks, but no one in the terror cell had the ability to build an electronic triggering device.

Prosecutors said members of the group were also planning to open fire in a crowded German city with a gun fitted with a silencer.

Abdalla said Al Tawhid in Germany collected large amounts of donations from supporters and passed the funds along to Afghanistan, where he said it went to the Taliban and al Qaeda.

He did not specify the amounts collected, but said not all the donors were aware of where the money was going.

German authorities have arrested scores of suspected Islamic militants and cracked down on militant groups after it emerged that three of the suicide hijackers who led the attacks on the United States lived for years in the northern city of Hamburg.

Abdalla, who had been living in Germany when he was arrested last year, already told the court he learned bomb-making skills and how to make poisons from ordinary household provisions.

He has also disclosed code words his group used in telephone calls - "apples" for grenades, "acorns" for ammunition, "television" for pistol and "girl" for potential target.

His case provides a test for dealing with the limited number of Islamic extremists willing to feed information to intelligence services.