Suspects in German terror plan to confess

Judge Ottmar Breidling allowed a recess, while the defendants conferred under the watch of federal police.

Fritz Gelowicz, the alleged ringleader of the group that allegedly was planning bombings for the fall of 2007, said he also wanted to confess and would then submit to questioning. "There will be surprises," said his defense attorney, Dirk Uden.

But it could be two weeks before such confessions are given, since the trial is not set to resume until June 23.

Gelowicz, 29, and co-defendant Daniel Martin Schneider, 22, are German converts to Islam. They and Yilmaz, 29, a Turk living in Germany, and Attila Selek, a 23-yearold German national, are suspected of operating as a German cell of the radical Islamic Jihad Union a group the US State Department says was responsible for coordinated bombings outside the US and Israeli embassies in Uzbekistan in July 2004.

Prosecutors allege that they were plotting bombing attacks in Germany against American citizens and facilities.

Prosecutors said the group was considering attacks in many cities, including Frankfurt, Dortmund, Duesseldorf, Cologne, Stuttgart, Munich and Ramstein home of a large US Air Force base which were to be carried out before Germany's parliament voted in October 2007 to extend the country's commitment of troops to Afghanistan.