ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how and why terrorist groups innovate more generally and al-Qaeda-related terrorist plots in Europe more specifically. Harrach, who had taken on the nom de guerre "Abu Talha al-Almani", was only the most prominent of an increasing number of Germans and other European recruits to make his way to the jihadist network of guest-houses and training facilities in North Waziristan. A few weeks after the breaking up of the Dsseldorf cell two more Western recruits who had been dispatched back to Europe were arrested: Maqsood Lodin from Vienna and Yusuf Ocak from Berlin. In the course of the trial against Lodin and Ocak in Berlin in 2011/2012, information emerged about strategic debates among al-Qaeda leaders which had led to the sending of these two recruits back to their countries of origin. The text must have been part of a much larger exchange of letters between Osama bin Laden, Muritani and Atiyatallah.
