Terror Suspect Confesses in Germany

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From AP: A Jordanian confessed in a plea agreement to co-founding a terrorist group, telling a court as his trial opened Wednesday that he participated in online discussions about setting up a training camp in Sudan. Thaer Alhalah, 33, told the Schleswig-Holstein state court he had contact with other group members through online chat groups and telephone calls starting in April 2006. Asked when the plans to start a camp in Sudan took form, Alhalah said: "They just developed." Speaking in Arabic through a translator, he told the court that jihad, or holy war, "for a Muslim is self defense... If someone attacks my country or my belongings with violence, I am ready to defend my country and my belongings with weapons," he said.

The confession to charges of founding a terrorist organization abroad was part of a plea deal that means Alhalah will be sentenced at most to two years in prison, compared to the legal maximum of up to 10 years. With the time he has already served while awaiting trial and German laws requiring only a percentage of a sentence be served, he will most likely be freed and sent back to Jordan in April, prosecutors said.

Born in Kuwait in 1974, Alhalah moved to Jordan in 1990, then to Iraq in 1994 to attend university in Baghdad. He spent time living in Australia and went back and forth to Jordan before moving in 2005 to Sweden, where he was arrested last year on a warrant from Germany for his alleged involvement in forming the terrorist group. Prosecutors claim he founded the group in June or July of 2006 along with four other people.

Among them was the group's alleged ringleader, 38-year-old Redouane El Habhab, a German of Moroccan heritage who was convicted by the same court in January. El Habhab was sentenced to five years and nine months in prison; he is expected to testify Thursday in Alhalah's trial. A third suspected member, identified only as Abdelali M., 25, is also in detention pending trial. The other two suspects remain at large.

Federal prosecutors said the group's aim was to "build up a front against the 'crusaders' in Sudan and to carry out jihad by committing serious crimes in accordance with a call by Osama bin Laden." Alhalah is accused of being responsible for handling the group's finances and recruiting new members. He told the court he never had a specific task but admitted later that he did end up handling finances. "I said that I would try to take care of financial matters," Alhalah said. The group aimed to set up a camp in Sudan to train volunteers "and thus to be prepared for a guerrilla war expected by the group," prosecutors said, without specifying a potential target.