Online rape video drove me to kill airmen, says accused

Arid Uka, 21, is accused of murdering senior airman Nicholas Alden, 25, and airman first class Zachary Cuddeback, 21, on 2 March. He appeared yesterday for the first day of his trial.

Uka is also accused of attempting to kill three other service personnel – wounding two and taking aim at a third who escaped when Uka’s gun jammed.

Although Germany has experienced scores of terrorist attacks in past decades, largely from leftist groups, the airport attack was the first by an alleged Islamic extremist.

Uka went to the airport with the intent “to kill an indeterminate number of American soldiers, but if possible a large number,” prosecutor Herbert Deimer told the state court in Frankfurt.

No pleas are entered in the German system, and Uka confessed to the killings after the indictment was read, telling the court “what I did was wrong but I cannot undo what I did”.

He went on to urge other radical Muslims not to seek inspiration in his attack, urging them not to be taken in by “lying propaganda” on the internet.

“To this day I try to understand what happened and why I did it… but I don’t understand,” he said.

Co-operating with authorities and confessing to a crime can help reduce a defendant’s sentence – but Uka refused to tell the court where he obtained the gun used in the crime, which presiding judge Thomas Sagebiel said meant his confession was not complete.

Uka described becoming increasingly introverted in the months before the attack, staying at home and playing computer games and watching Islamic propaganda on the net.

The night before the crime, he said he followed a link to a video posted on Facebook that purported to show US soldiers raping a teenage Muslim girl. It turned out to be a scene from the 2007 anti-war Brian De Palma film Redacted.. He said he then decided he should do anything possible to prevent more US soldiers going to Afghanistan.

“I thought what I saw in that video, these people would do in Afghanistan,” he said, wiping away tears.

Uka conceded when asked by prosecutor Jochen Weingarten that the airman driving the bus had not been going to Afghanistan. On the bus on the way to the airport to look for victims, he said he listened to Islamic music on his iPod while nursing doubts that he would be able to go through with his attack.

“On the one hand I wanted to do something to help the women, and on the other hand I hoped I would not see any soldiers,” he said.

Six months later, he said he no longer understood why he went through with the killings.

“If you ask me why I did this, I can only say… I don’t understand any more how I went that far.”

The indictment says Uka went to the airport armed with a pistol, extra ammunition and two knives. Inside terminal two, he spotted two US servicemen arriving and followed them to their air force bus.

After 16 servicemen, including the driver, were on or near the bus, he approached one of the men for a cigarette. He confirmed they were air crew en route to Afghanistan, then “turned around, put the magazine that had been concealed in his backpack into his pistol, and cocked the weapon,” the indictment read.

He first shot Alden in the back of the head, then boarded the vehicle shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) and shot and killed Cuddeback, who was the driver, before firing at others.

He wounded two others – one victim lost sight in one eye – before his gun jammed and he fled. He was chased and caught.

The case continues.