2011 Frankfurt Airport shooting

The 2011 Frankfurt Airport shooting occurred on 2 March 2011 at Frankfurt Airport in Germany. The shooter, Arid Uka, was arrested and charged with killing two United States Airmen and seriously wounding two others. He was convicted of murder and attempted murder and sentenced to life in prison on 10 February 2012.[1]

For the attack in 1985, see 1985 Frankfurt airport bombing.

2011 Frankfurt Airport shooting
Part of Terrorism in Germany and Islamic terrorism in Europe
An improvised memorial to the victims, a few days after the attack. Wut, Trauer + warum? – Anger, mourning + why?
LocationFrankfurt Airport, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Date2 March 2011 (UTC+01)
Attack type
Spree shooting
WeaponsFN P35 pistol (9mm)
Deaths2
Injured2
PerpetratorArid Uka
MotiveRevenge for U.S. military operations in Afghanistan

According to the court judge at Oberlandesgericht Frankfurt, this was the first terrorist attack in Germany in which the perpetrator had an Islamist motive.[2]

Shooting

According to the German investigators, Uka targeted a United States Air Force bus parked outside the terminal building that was supposed to transport fifteen U.S. airmen to Ramstein Air Base.[3] He reportedly walked up to a waiting airman, asked him for a cigarette, and wanted to know whether the airmen were bound for Afghanistan.[4] When the airman said yes, according to German prosecutor Rainer Griesbaum, Uka waited for the airman to turn away and then shot him in the back of the head, killing him. Shouting "Allahu Akbar!"[5][6] the attacker then entered the bus, shooting and killing the driver, and continued to fire three shots at two other airmen, wounding them.[4] When he pointed his pistol at the head of another airman and pulled the trigger, the weapon jammed. Uka fled, but was pursued by the civilian airport employee Lamar Joseph Conner and Staff Sergeant Trevor Donald Brewer and shortly afterwards overpowered by two German police officers.[7] He was subsequently arrested.[4]

The two victims killed in the shooting were Senior Airman Nicholas Alden, 25, of South Carolina and Airman First Class Zachary Cuddeback, 21, of Virginia. Staff Sgt. Kristoffer Schneider was shot in the right temple and lost his sight in one eye. The right side of his face had to be rebuilt with titanium, and he suffers head pain and seizures. Part of his skull also had to be removed after an infection. Schneider was medically retired in 2012.[8] Edgar Veguilla was hit in the jaw and arm and suffered nerve damage.[4][9]

Conner and Brewer later received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in a ceremony on 16 January 2012. Federal Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich presented the decoration, citing their "exemplary courage and action which helped the Federal Police arrest the suspect".[7]

Perpetrator

Arid Uka, the 21-year-old perpetrator, was an ethnic Albanian born in Kosovo who had lived in Germany since he was one year old; his family having lived in there for four decades. His grandfather was a Kosovo Albanian imam, while his parents and two brothers led secular lives.[10][11] He had been working at the airport post office.[3]

In the months before the attack, Uka underwent a late-adolescent crisis.[12] Uka left school before his university-entrance diploma, but didn't tell his family. Instead, he told them that he had finished the diploma successfully. His family members, former friends, and one of his employers described him as introverted, polite, and not aggressive. Months before the shooting, Uka broke ties to all his friends and retreated. During this time, he was extensively surfing the web visiting websites with Salafi jihadist content.[13] He started dressing in Salafist dress, and began to study Arabic.[12]

Uka decided to join the fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan, but failed to do so since he failed to establish the right contacts.[12] Via the internet, Uka managed to establish contact with Sheik Abdellatif of the so-called Da'wa group, who preached in two mosques in Frankfurt. The Salafi mosque of these two is considered as a meeting-point for radical Islamists. Several well-known Islamists have been seen there.[14] An early example of Salafi Lone wolf terrorism in Europe, Uka's sole contacts with extremists was online, he never had direct personal contact and was never involved in physical network.[15][3]

According to German authorities, Uka confessed to the killings when interrogated after the shooting.[3]

Uka's lawyer said that the motivation for the shooting was a video on YouTube, which showed US soldiers raping Iraqi Muslim women. Uka was convinced that the video was genuine, but it was in fact a clip taken from Redacted, an American film based on the Mahmudiyah massacre. On the internet, Uka posted on several Islamist forums, later claiming that through the content and the discussions in these forums, he came to believe that his fellow Muslims were in global war with the United States.[16][17] Uka was also influenced by jihadist nasheed,[18] including nasheed made by Abou Maleeq,[19] who would later join the Islamic State.[20]

Trial and sentence

During Uka's trial, his defence lawyer described him as a non-typical violent criminal who is neither religiously motivated nor an Islamist terrorist, while the Attorney General of Germany named Uka as a single perpetrator, which was applied for a sentence of life imprisonment plus a finding of "exceptional gravity of guilt".[21]

On 10 February 2012, the Hessian State Superior Court (Oberlandesgericht Frankfurt am Main) sentenced Uka to life imprisonment for two counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder with the determination of an "exceptional gravity of guilt", which means that he will not be eligible for parole after having served fifteen years.[1] Because he was sentenced to more than three years imprisonment, he will be deported to Kosovo after having served his sentence since he does not hold German citizenship.[22]

See also

References
  1. "Frankfurt airport gunman jailed for life". BBC News. 10 February 2012. Retrieved 10 February 2012.
  2. "Terrorprozess: Lebenslang für Arid Uka". rtl.de (in German). Archived from the original on 18 December 2018. "Wir haben es hier tatsächlich mit dem ersten islamistisch motivierten Terroranschlag auf deutschem Boden zu tun", sagte der Vorsitzende Richter Thomas Sagebiel in seiner Urteilsbegründung. ["We are actually dealing here with the first Islamist-motivated terrorist attack on German soil," said Judge Thomas Sagebiel in his verdict.]
  3. Pidd, Helen (3 March 2011). "Frankfurt airport shooting may have Islamist link, say police". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 6 March 2011.
  4. "Frankfurt airport shooting: Jammed gun 'saved lives'". BBC News. 4 March 2011. Retrieved 6 March 2011.
  5. Sundby, Alex (3 March 2011). "Source: Air Force shooter shouted "Allahu akbar"". CBS News.
  6. Orr, Bob (3 March 2011). "Killer of U.S. airmen is radical Muslim, German official says". KRTV-TV. CBS News. Archived from the original on 14 July 2014.
  7. "Federal Minister Friedrich presents two Americans with Cross of the Order of Merit". Archived from the original on 14 July 2014.
  8. "From tragedy comes triumph: Wounded warrior shares his story". United States Air Forces. 28 January 2013. Retrieved 11 April 2017. The couple and their children decided to make Grand Forks, N.D., their home after Schneider medically retired from the Air Force late last year.
  9. Gordts, Eline (10 February 2012). "Arid Uka, Frankfurt Airport Shooter, Sentenced To Life". Huffington Post.
  10. BKA: Keine radikale Familie um Flughafen-Täter. In: Focus, 14. November 2011 focus.de (in German)
  11. Flughafen-Attentäter verurteilt: Lebenslänglich für Arid Uka. In: Berliner Zeitung, 10 February 2012 berliner-zeitung.de (in German)
  12. "Bohleber, Werner, and Marianne LeuzingerBohleber. "Processes of Political and Terrorist Radicalization in Late Adolescence–Some Case Examples."" (PDF).
  13. Höchststrafe für US-Soldaten-Mord. In: Die Tageszeitung, 10 February 2012 die Tageszeitung (in German)
  14. Der Frankfurter Pistolenschütze und seine Kontakte‘‘. In: heise online, 3. März 2011 heise.de (in German)
  15. Janis Just (2015). Jihad 2.0: The Impact of Social Media on the Salafist Scene and the Nature of Terrorism. Anchor Academic Publishing (aap_verlag). pp. 56–57. ISBN 978-3-95489-338-6.
  16. Lee Jarvis; Stuart MacDonald; Thomas M. Chen (2015). Terrorism Online: Politics, Law and Technology. Routledge. pp. 41, 46, 101. ISBN 978-1-317-90803-6.
  17. Weimann, Gabriel (2015), "Terrorist Migration to Social Media", Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, 16 (1): 180–187, ISBN 9781626162259, JSTOR 43773679
  18. Thomas Hegghammer (2017). Jihadi Culture. Cambridge University Press. pp. 79–81. ISBN 978-1-107-01795-5.
  19. "Jihadist songs loved by US airmen's killer banned". www.thelocal.de. 16 March 2012.
  20. Weinthal, Benjamin; News, Fox (11 February 2015). "The rapping butcher of ISIS: German jihadist becomes terrorists' poster boy".
  21. Pressemitteilung des Generalbundesanwalts vom 7. Juli 2011 generalbundesanwalt.de (in German)
  22. Crolly, Hannelore (10 February 2012). "Flughafenattentäter: Arid Uka droht nach der Haft Abschiebung ins Kosovo". DIE WELT.
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