A 21-year-old man from Kosovo apologized in court yesterday for killing two US soldiers at Frankfurt airport as they headed to Afghanistan, saying he had been influenced by Islamist propaganda.
“I want to apologize to everyone,” Arid Uka told the court in Frankfurt, Germany, on the first day of his murder trial.
“On March 2, I killed two people and opened fire on three others. Today I can’t understand myself how I could have acted this way,” he said.
Uka opened fire on a group of US soldiers at Frankfurt airport as they were on their way to join US forces in Afghanistan. Two airmen were killed and two wounded.
“The investigation showed that the accused wanted to kill the soldiers because they belonged to US forces under the ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] mandate in Afghanistan,” according to federal prosecutors, referring to the NATO-led operation.
Uka, who faces a possible life sentence for murder and attempted murder, was arrested at the scene.
Prosecutors believe Uka, who was born in Mitrovica in northern Kosovo, but who grew up in Frankfurt, acted alone and did not belong to a terrorist network.
Dressed in a white shirt and jeans, Uka told the court he had taken neither drugs nor alcohol on the day of the attack.
Speaking in a low voice, he admitted to going to the airport with a 9mm pistol and two knives.
“It was total idiocy and in contradiction with my [religious] beliefs,” he said.
“No one should think of imitating me,” he said, adding that he was influenced by “lies” and “propaganda” after seeing a video on the Internet which alleged that US soldiers in Afghanistan had raped an Afghan woman.
Prosecutors said he told investigators it was on the morning of the attack that he decided to go out and kill as many US soldiers as possible in revenge.
The propaganda video used extracts from the film Redacted, a 2007 fictional drama by Brian De Palma.
The shootings have been called the first jihadist attack in Germany. In 1986, a bomb in a west Berlin nightclub blamed on Syria killed two US soldiers.
The Sept. 11 attacks on the US were planned in part in Hamburg by an al-Qaeda cell led by the hijackers’ ringleader, and in 2007 police thwarted a major plot to attack US soldiers and civilians in Germany.
The trial is expected to last 10 days, with a verdict handed down early next year.
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