Strasbourg cathedral bombing plot

In December 2000, an al-Qaeda plot to bomb the Strasbourg Christmas market, at the feet of the Strasbourg Cathedral on New Year's Eve was discovered. The plot was foiled by French and German police after a terrorist network based in Frankfurt, Germany, the "Frankfurt group", was unravelled. A total of fourteen people were convicted as part of the plot; four in Germany and ten in France, including the operational leader, Mohammed Bensakhria (a.k.a. "Meliani"), thought to be a European deputy to Osama bin Laden. The alleged mastermind of the plot was thought to have been Abu Doha, who was detained in the United Kingdom.

After being tipped off by British intelligence, German police on 26 December 2000 discovered bomb-making equipment during a raid of an apartment in Frankfurt. Four men were arrested. Among the findings were several pressure cookers, 30kg of chemicals that could be used to make explosives, and a notebook describing how to mix homemade bombs. A video was also discovered, showing a crowded Christmas market in Strasbourg, with a voiceover in Arabic calling the people in the video "enemies of Allah." The voiceover, attributed to one of the suspects, further said "This cathedral is Allah's enemy," and "You will go to hell, Allah willing." The call that had alerted British intelligence had been made by one in the group asking Abu Doha, the alleged mastermind of the plot, for more cash; Doha was already wanted by the United States for his connection to the Los Angeles International Airport millennium bombing plot.

Members of the Frankfurt group were found to have trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, to have connections to Islamist networks in Spain, Italy, Belgium and the United Kingdom, and to the Algerian terrorist group Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC). The discovery of the plot in Frankfurt led to further arrests in the United Kingdom, where another plot of killing members of the European Parliament was discovered, in which MEPs were to be killed with sarin nerve gas during session in Strasbourg in February 2001. British police arrested twelve people including Doha in February 2001 as a result of the Frankfurt operation. All British suspects were quickly released due to "lack of evidence," although Doha was subsequently re-arrested. According to the Crown Prosecution Service, the charges against six main suspects were dropped for "security reasons," which was linked by others to an MI5 bid to "monitor" the group.