The suspect in the killing of two UK-based US airmen at Frankfurt airport has confessed to targeting American military members, a German security official has said.
Investigators are probing what they consider a possible act of Islamic terrorism.
German federal prosecutors took over the investigation into Wednesday’s shooting, which also injured two US airmen, one of them critically. They are working with US authorities, who said the suspect was not on any American watch list.
Hesse state interior minister Boris Rhein said that the suspect, identified as a 21-year-old ethnic Albanian from Kosovo, was apparently radicalised over the last few weeks. Relatives in northern Kosovo identified him as Arid Uka, whose family has been living in Germany for 40 years.
He lived in a 12-story apartment building in the working-class suburb of Sossenheim – the same building where a man with links to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Rami M, also lived, said an official.
Rami M, whose last name has not been released, was picked up in Pakistan last year and extradited to Germany, where he faces charges of membership of a terrorist organisation. It is not clear how much contact the two had – Rami M left Germany in 2009 for Pakistan – but neighbours said they had known one another.
The suspect opened fire on a US Air Force bus carrying 15 airmen based in the Lakenheath airfield in Suffolk from Frankfurt to Ramstein Air Base, the Air Force said. From there, the airmen were to deploy to Afghanistan.
Uka’s family said he worked at Frankfurt airport and was a devout Muslim. He was taken into custody immediately after the shooting and was later brought before a federal judge in Karlsruhe, accused of killing two US military personnel and seriously injuring two others.
German federal prosecutors said in a statement “there is a suspicion that the act was motivated by Islamism”.
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