The verdicts against the four self-confessed Islamic militants are expected on Thursday at the higher regional court in Duesseldorf. Federal prosecutors are seeking prison sentences running between five-and-a-half to 13 years for belonging to a terrorist organization, plotting murder and conspiring for an explosives attack.

The defendants had planned "a mass murder unrivalled in Germany," federal prosecutor Volker Brinkmann said.

"The plot still sends chills down one's spine," Brinkmann told the court in closing arguments. "They appointed themselves masters over life and death."

But defense attorneys spoke of the "largest insufficient attempted terrorist attack" and are asking for sentences below 10 years.

Unparalleled surveillance operation

The men admitted to planning serious bomb attacks for the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) against US military facilities in Germany, discos and bars frequented by Americans, as well as airports. The terror attacks were to take place in October 2007, when parliament was to vote to extend German participation in the NATO force in Afghanistan.

The elite counter-terrorism unit GSG 9 - using US and German intelligence information - caught Daniel Schneider, Fritz Gelowicz and Adem Yilmaz red-handed on September 4, 2007 in a holiday cabin in Oberschledorn, in the Sauerland region in western Germany.

In what has been called the biggest surveillance operation in German post-war history, police found the three suspects as they were preparing some 730 liters of hydrogen peroxide liquid. This would have resulted in about 410 kilograms of explosives - 100 times the amount used in the 2005 London bombings, prosecutors said.

But investigators, who had already been tracking the so-called "Sauerland cell" around the clock for months, had previously exchanged the dangerous solution with a harmless liquid.

The fourth defendant Atilla Selek was later arrested in Turkey where he was to acquire the detonators for the bombs. He was extradited to Germany one year later.

Insight into terrorist structures

The four defendants aged 24 to 31 have made extensive confessions which fill more than 1,200 pages. This significantly shortened the duration of the trial to slightly over 10 months. It had originally been expected to run for at least two years.

More importantly, German authorities have collected valuable insight into the workings of the IJU, which has ties to Al-Qaeda. It is believed to have set up training camps in Pakistan.

"We now know how recruitment works, how people are smuggled into the Afghan-Pakistani border region and how the training takes place," said federal prosecutor Rainer Griesbaum.

Homegrown terrorists

The extent of the planned attacks came as a shock when details were made public. But even more alarming was the realization that terrorist threats were not necessarily coming from abroad.

Two of the defendants, Gelowicz and Schneider, are Germans who converted to Islam when they were younger during a rough period of their lives. Though this isn't an unusual process, the two soon crossed paths with radical preachers and were convinced that it was their religious duty to fight the nonbelievers.

Precisely because they had no well-founded previous knowledge about Islam, it was particularly easy to convince them of this duty, investigators found.

Selek and Yilmaz were originally from Turkey, but had lived in Germany for years already and were considered well-integrated.

In the meantime, Gelowicz, Schneider and Selek have dissociated themselves from terrorism. In their final appeals to the court, they called their actions a "mistake." Yilmaz also confessed but declined to address the judges during the final hearing.

"I could have and should have acted differently," the 24-year-old Schneider said, adding that he hoped to complete a university degree behind bars. He said that he would accept the responsibility for his actions and accept his punishment.

Schneider faces the highest sentence, as he is also accused of attempted murder of a policeman. He had grabbed the handgun from the officer while being captured and fired off a shot. No one was wounded.

Now it's up to the court's judges to decide whether to believe their remorse and be more lenient in handing down sentences because of the lengthy confessions. Prosecutor Brinkmann said he could not distinguish true remorse among most of the defendants. Only Schneider convinced him.

sac/AFP/dpa/apn
Editor: Rob Turner