Kosovo Albanian suspect regrets his crimes

FRANKFURT, Germany, Aug. 31 – A Kosovo Albanian man confessed to killing two U.S. airmen at the Frankfurt airport, saying in emotional testimony at the opening of his trial that he had been influenced by radical Islamic propaganda online.
Arid Uka, 21, is charged with two counts of murder for the March 2 slaying of two U.S. military. Uka also faces three counts of attempted murder for wounding two more airmen and taking aim at a third before his gun jammed.
Although Germany has experienced scores of terrorist attacks in past decades, largely from leftist groups like the Red Army Faction, the airport attack was the first attributed to an 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 Diemer told a state court in Frankfurt on Wednesday.
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.
Uka wept repeatedly as he recounted the attack and watched the jihadist videos he said motivated him.
“To this day I try to understand what happened and why I did it… but I don’t understand,” he said, at times speaking so softly that court officials had to bring in a microphone and put it directly in front of him.
Cooperating with authorities and confessing can help reduce a defendant’s sentence _ but Uka refused to tell the court where he obtained the 9mm semi-automatic pistol he used, which Presiding Judge Thomas Sagebiel said meant his confession was incomplete.
The night before the crime, Uka said, he followed a link to a video posted on Facebook that purported to show American soldiers raping a teenage Muslim girl. It turned out to be a scene from the 2007 anti-war Brian De Palma film “Redacted,” taken out of context.
He said he then decided he should do anything possible to prevent more American soldiers from going to Afghanistan.
He says he now does not understand why he went through with the killings.
“If you ask me why I did this, I can only say … I don’t understand anymore how I went that far.”