Christian Ganczarski
Christian Manfred Ganczarski, nick name Abu Ibrahim, was born in Gliwice, South Poland, in 1966. In 1976 he moved to Germany with his parents and is a German citizen through marriage. Christian Ganczarski worked in Germany as a locksmith and a computer expert in his free time.
Under the influence of a Tunisian friend in his workplace, Christian Ganczarski, gradually,got interested in Islam and converted in 1990. He divorced his wife and shortly afterwards he married another German woman Muslim convert, Nicola ("Maymuna) Garbrecht.
In 1992, with the help of a Saudi gynecologist
Dr. Nadeem Elyas, from the Bilal Mosque in Aachen and head of the ZMD – Zentralrat der Muslime in Deutschland – Central Council for Muslims in Germany, he traveled to
Saudi Arabia. Dr. Nadeem Elyas had been asked by the Saudi royal family to target German converts and to send them to Islamic studies in Saudi Arabia, where they should be won over to the
Wahhabism interpretation of Islam.
In 1993 his wife and daughter joined him there. In
Saudi Arabia Christian Ganczarski came under the influence of the radical
school of Wahhabism. In 1994 all the family returned to
Germany. Christian Ganczarski settled in
Duisburg and was for some time a neighbor of
Karim Mehdi. Both worshiped together in the local Al-Taqwa Mosque. He also met in the Mosque several times with
Mohamedou Ould Slahi and Mounir el Motassadeq, who were connected to the notorious
Hamburg Cell.
Christian Ganczarski visited in Bosnia and Afghanistan. According to later investigations in 04/2000 Christian Ganczarski handed over a letter from a certain brother Mukhtar to Osama Bin Laden in Karachi, Pakistan, where he also met with another covert from Australia - Jack Roche. During the years 1999-2001 Christian Ganczarski visited 5 times Pakistan and Afghanistan.
After The 9/11 the alleged connections of Christian Ganczarski with Hamburg Cell members drew the attention of the German security service and he was put on a surveillance list.
Christian Ganczarski was in phone connection with Nizar Nasr Nawar shortly before he committed the suicide Jerba Attack in Tunisia. After the attack, on 04/15/2002, Christian Ganczarski was detained by German authority for questioning. He was released shortly afterwards because of lack of evidence and left to Saudi Arabia.
Christian Ganczarski was arrested, on 06/03/2003, at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, when he arrived from Saudi Arabia, almost simultaneously with another cell mate, Karim Mehdi, as they traveled to the French island of Reunion in the INDIAN Ocean, about 500 miles (800km) east of Madagascar, where, prosecutors said, they were planning to stage a Bali-style nightclub attack using a booby-trapped vehicle. Both were close associates of Willie Brigitte.
* On Friday 02/06/2009 in Paris, the French court convicted Christian Ganczarski in being involved in organizing the Jerba Attack. Christian Ganczarski was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment. The sentence was a shorter than prosecutors had hoped for.
The brother of Nizar Nasr Nawar,
Walid Nawar, was found guilty too for
having bought the satellite phone with which Nasr Nawar last would have called Khalid Shaik Mohammed a few moments before the attack. Walid Nawar was sentenced to 12 years in jail.
