Terror suspect Adem Yilmaz, one of the three alleged ringleaders in the foiled German bombing plot, worked at Frankfurt Airport from 1997-2002. Spiegel reports that Yilmaz, a foreign national and citizen of Turkey, had been employed by German rail company Deutsche Bahn — and that he worked in the security division on the train that serves Frankfurt Airport.

"During that time he [i.e. Yilmaz] worked in the railway station of Frankfurt airport for a time. The airport was one of several targets the three men are alleged to have considered. He left the job in 2002 and drew unemployment benefit [sic] after that."

The Deutsche Bahn group is Germany's largest railway enterprise and one of the largest transportation corporations in the world. Approximately two billion passengers travel on Deutsche Bahn each year. Anyone riding on a legendary "Eurail Pass" travels on a Deutshe Bahn train when in Germany. 

Adem Yilmaz is not the first suspected terrorist to have worked at an airport. This summer, Neil Cavuto had me on his FOX News television show to discuss the alarming number of convicted, indicted and suspected terrorists around the globe who are arrested with "airport worker" on their resume. This list includes:

  • Russell "Mohammed" Defreitas, alleged mastermind of the John F. Kennedy International Airport plot, was a cargo worker at JFK.

  • Fort Dix terror suspect Mohamed Ibrahim Shnewer was employed as a taxi cab driver at the Philadelphia airport when he was arrested in May 2007.

  • Convicted terrorist Jawad Akbar, of the British fertilizer bomb plot, worked at Gatwick Airport in 1999-2000.

  • Convicted dirty-bomb plotter Dhieren Barot — head of a British al-Qaeda cell — worked at Heathrow Airport from 1991-1995.

  • One of the alleged masterminds of the London Planes Plot (the US-UK, Bonjinka-style plot) carried a Heathrow Airport security clearance at the time of his arrest in August 2006.

  • According to FBI Special Agent Thomas Powers, a baggage handler who worked at Logan Airport in Boston in 1996, was a known member of the terrorist organization Hezbollah.

Is this surprising? Unfortunately not. Is it cause for alarm? Absolutely. Download the Al Qaeda Manual from the FBI's website, (a jihad manual found by British police inside an Al Qaeda members home in Manchester, England) and you will see that jihadists are encouraged to recruit brothers who work at "borders, airports and seaports."

It is also not the first time that terrorists have targeted Frankfurt Airport. Nine months ago, in "German Terror Cell Approached Airport Workers," I reported on an Associated Press story involving a six-man terror cell that approached an airport worker at Frankfurt Airport and succeeded in getting that individual, who had security clearance, to agree to smuggling explosives onto an Israeli plane in exchange for money. The plot was thwarted before it went operational.

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