Killer of U.S. airmen is radical Muslim, German official says

CNN is reporting new details about the man in Germany who murdered two American Air Force servicemen:

The man suspected of shooting and killing two U.S. Air Force servicemen in Germany was seeking revenge because of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, according to a warrant issued on Friday for the suspect.

The suspect, Arid Uka, is a recently radicalized Muslim who seems to have been influenced by local radical Islamist websites, according to German authorities. Prosecutors say Uka shot and killed two U.S. servicemen and wounded two others in the attack Wednesday on a U.S. military bus at Frankfurt Airport.

The arrest warrant for Uka lists two accusations of murder, three allegations of attempted murder and two accusations of causing severe bodily harm.

The 21-year-old man said he was motivated to carry out the attack after seeing a video on the internet the day before, which he claimed showed U.S. soldiers raping Muslim women, according to a German intelligence official who viewed a record of the suspect's interrogation.

It's possible, not even unlikely, that Arid Uka is just stupid or he has serious mental health issues.

But it must be said that there are stupid and crazy people from all religions. Yet Jewish crazies, Hindu crazies and Christian crazies are not regularly translating their anger into terrorist attacks which they justify on the basis of their religion.

Islam is unique in this regard because so many of its adherents promote a violent response to whatever they believe is a slight against their people or their faith.

He was friends on Facebook with several pro-al Qaeda extremists from a group based in Bonn, Germany, that is known to German intelligence officials, according to the official. He also had links to an Islamist preacher named Pierre Vogel and someone named Nessery, who was arrested about two months ago in Afghanistan, according to a U.S. official with direct knowledge of the investigation.

I wonder if a legal case can be made against those "pro-al Qaeda extremists from a group based in Bonn, Germany"? I wonder if it could be demonstrated that they incited violence?

The suspect is from Mitrovica, a town in northern Kosovo, that country's interior minister, Bajram Rexhepi, told CNN. He cited the U.S. Embassy in Pristina as his source. The U.S. official with knowledge of the probe said Uka was a 1-year-old toddler when he moved to Germany, and that authorities believe Uka's relatives had suffered in the 1990s during the Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanians.

That he is a Kosovar is the most ironic part of the story. American soldiers and airmen risked their lives to save the lives of the Muslim majority in Kosovo. Tens of thousands of Kosovars who would have been killed by the Serbs are alive today because of the heroic efforts of Americans to protect them. That country is free today only because of U.S. intervention. And yet this one Kosovar nutjob decides to kill American soldiers. It's pathetically crazy.