Arid Uka

Background

Uka has lived in Germany since 1991; his family had been living in the country for four decades. His grandfather is a Kosovo Albanian imam, while his parents and two brothers led secular lives. It was reported that Uka prayed five times a day, and when he was working for Deutsche Post at Frankfurt Airport, he was asked not to pray during his shift.

Uka was described as an excellent pupil in school, but had frequent absences due to psychological problems. In 2005, his class was invited to the German Chancellery in Berlin when they won a prize for a school project about violence prevention in society. On this occasion, Uka was photographed next to German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.

In the months before the attack, Uka was undergoing a late-adolescent crisis. Uka left school before his university-entrance diploma, but didn't tell his family. Instead, he told them that he had finished the diploma successfully. His family members, former friends, and one of his employers described him as introverted, polite, and not aggressive. Months before the shooting, Uka broke ties to all his friends and retreated. During this time, he was extensively surfing the web visiting websites with Salafi jihadist content. He started dressing in Salafist dress, and began to study arabic.

Uka decided to join the fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan, but failed to do so since he failed to establish the right contacts.

Contacts

Via the internet, Uka managed to establish contact with Sheik Abdellatif of the so-called Da'wa group, who preached in two mosques in Frankfurt. The Salafi mosque of these two is considered as a meeting-point for radical Islamists. Several well-known Islamists have been seen there. Uka's sole contacts with extremists was online, he never had direct personal contact and was never involved in physical network.

Shooting

After asking soldiers outside a bus waiting at a terminal of Frankfurt Airport whether they they were going to Afghanistan, Uka boarded the bus. Shouting "Allahu Akbar" ("God is great"). Uka fired with a pistol on unarmed United States Air Force airmen and the driver of an Air Force bus that was. The bus was a shuttle service for US soldiers who were formerly stationed at Royal Air Force Lakenheath in the United Kingdom and intended to be forwarded to Ramstein Air Base in Rhineland-Palatinate.

The first airmen had already boarded the bus, while others still waited to do so. Uka first shot an airman in the back of the head as he climbed the bus stairs, and then the bus driver behind the steering wheel after screaming, "Allahu Akbar"; both shooting victims died. The victims are Senior Airman Nicholas J. Alden, 25, and Airman 1st Class Zachary Cuddeback, 21. Uka next entered the bus and fired at other passengers, severely wounding two. Then, as he was about to shoot Sergeant Trevor Donald Brewer, who was trying to cover himself between seat rows, his pistol jammed. Uka left the bus and tried to flee inside a terminal, but he was pursed by Brewer and an American airport employee, Lamar Joseph Conner. Inside the terminal, German Bundespolizei was able to catch the assassin. Brewer and Conner later were honoured with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Motives

According to investigations, the motivation for the shooting was a video on YouTube, which showed US soldiers raping Iraqi Muslim women. Uka was convinced that the video was genuine, but it was revealed that the video was a clip taken from Redacted, an American movie based on the Mahmudiyah massacre. On the internet, Uka posted on several Islamist forums, later claiming that through the content and the discussions in these forums, he came to the belief that his Muslim fellows were in global war with the United States. Uka was also influences by Jihadist anashid, and enjoyed First-person shooter video games.

Trial

During Uka's trial, his defence lawyer described him as a non-typical violent criminal who is neither religiously motivated nor an Islamist terrorist, while the Attorney General of Germany named Uka as a single perpetrator, which was applied for a sentence of life imprisonment plus a finding of "exceptional gravity of guilt". The Hessian Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht Frankfurt am Main) decided on 10 February 2012 to act on the applications filed by the Attorney General of Germany. Uka was sentenced to life imprisonment with the determination of an "exceptional gravity of guilt", which means that he will not be eligible for parole after having served fifteen years. His sentencing to a term of more than three years in a German prison mandates that he will be deported to Kosovo after having served his sentence since he does not hold German citizenship.