WASHINGTON - On May 16 last year, a 22-year-old Austrian named Maqsood Lodin was being questioned by police in Berlin. He had recently returned from Pakistan via Budapest, Hungary, and then travelled overland to Germany. His interrogators were surprised to find that hidden in his underpants were a digital storage device and memory cards. Buried inside them was a pornographic video and a file. Several weeks later, after laborious efforts to crack a password and software to make the file almost invisible, German investigators discovered encoded inside the actual video a treasure trove of intelligence — more than 100 al Qaeda documents that included an inside track on some of the terror group’s most audacious plots and a road map for future operations.Future plots include the idea of seizing cruise ships and carrying out attacks in Europe similar to the gun attacks by militants that paralyzed the Indian city of Mumbai in November 2008. Ten gunmen killed 164 people in that three-day rampage. “Terrorist training manuals in PDF format in German, English and Arabic were among the documents, too,” the CNN reported quoting intelligence sources.US intelligence sources told CNN that the documents uncovered are “pure gold;” one source says that they are the most important haul of al Qaeda materials in the last year, besides those found when U.S. Navy SEALs raided Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a year ago and killed the al Qaeda leader.One document was called “Future Works.” Its authorship is unclear, but intelligence officials believe it came from al Qaeda’s inner core. It may have been the work of Younis al Mauretani, a senior al Qaeda operative until his capture by Pakistani police in 2011.The document appears to have been the product of discussions to find new targets and methods of attack. German investigators believe it was written in 2009 — and that it remains the template for al Qaeda’s plans. Lodin and a man called Yusuf Ocak, who allegedly travelled back to Europe with him, are now on trial in Berlin where they are pleading not guilty. Ocak was detained in Vienna two weeks after Lodin’s arrest. According to a senior Western counter terrorism official, their names were on a watch list, and when they handed over documents at a European border crossing, their names registered with counterterrorism agencies.Prosecutors believe the pair met at a terrorist training camp in Pakistan’s tribal territories and were sent back to Europe to recruit a network of suicide bombers.