Germany points finger at shadowy group for plot

LONDON, Sep 5 (Reuters) The Islamic Jihad Union, named by Germany as being behind a major bomb plot against US-linked targets, is an obscure militant movement with its origins in Uzbekistan.

German authorities said today they had arrested three members of a domestic cell of the group on suspicion of planning ''massive bomb attacks'' on US installations in Germany.

According to the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base, an authoritative online database, the movement -- also called the Islamic Jihad Group -- emerged in 2004 as a splinter faction from another Central Asian organisation, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

It claimed responsibility for a series of suicide attacks that killed 47 people in April of that year. Three months later, it killed at least two people in simultaneous attacks on the US and Israeli embassies and the Uzbek prosecutor's office.

''The attacks were highly sophisticated and they cemented IJG's status as a real terrorist threat in Central Asia,'' said the Terrorism Knowledge Base. However, it has not carried out further attacks since then.

REGIONAL CONNECTIONS Security analysts said the group's suspected involvement in the German plot showed the interconnected nature of international Islamist groups across regions.

''You're talking about an al Qaeda affiliate movement. It's all part of this nebulous network of affiliated Islamists,'' said Nick Pratt, a CIA veteran now at the George C Marshall European Center for Security Studies.

Edwin Bakker, security analyst at Dutch think-tank the Clingendael Institute, cautioned against reading too much into the naming of one specific group by the German authorities.

He said militants' connections to particular groups are often very tenuous.

''They're part of a global jihad, they're part of an idea. To give them a certain label and say 'it's this or that group' is not a reality any more. It's much more loose,'' he said.

REUTERS LPB PM1944