Germany jails 4 Islamists over attack plots

A German court sentences to life in prison an Islamist terrorist who plotted a failed bomb attack at a railway station, and hands jail terms to three other extremists.

Marco Gaebel, 29, a German citizen, planted a home-made pipe bomb in a sports bag at the main train station of Bonn, the capital of the former West Germany, in December 2012. The bomb failed to go off, but its discovery sparked a major terrorism alert that caused travel chaos at the station two weeks before Christmas.

Gaebel and the three others were also found guilty of forming a terrorist organization and of plotting to shoot dead the leader of anti-immigrant group Pro-NRW in North Rhine-Westphalia state in March 2013. The four militants were furious after the right-wing fringe group had staged an anti-Islamic street protest and displayed caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed outside a local mosque.

— AFP