Alarm in Germany – attack plans: 20-year-old still in custody

The National Criminal Investigation Department announced on Friday that he was still in police custody “based on security measures”. The 20-year-old from Saxony-Anhalt, who, according to police information, planned a serious act of violence, was arrested in Helmstedt on November 21.

Two young people were recently arrested in North Rhine-Westphalia and Brandenburg for allegedly planning an attack on the Christmas market. The two young people arrested on suspicion of terrorism are said to have sympathized with the terrorist organization ‘Islamic State’ (IS). They are in custody. According to the Federal Public Prosecution Service in Düsseldorf, they allegedly agreed to kill visitors to a Christmas market in Leverkusen in early December by detonating a small truck.

“We still have Islamists”
The LKA Lower Saxony did not want to provide further details about the 20-year-old from Helmstedt for tactical reasons. However, Lower Saxony’s Interior Minister Daniela Behrens told NDR on Thursday: “He has announced that he obviously wants to commit attacks in connection with major events during the Christmas period, and that is why we have taken him into preventive custody. The man is from Iraq, the SPD politician told NDR, which reported after a joint investigation with WDR.

Regarding the security situation at the Christmas markets, Behrens said that the police there were “very clear and robust” – partly because of the armed conflict in the Middle East. “We still have Islamists,” she emphasized.

Young people had IS attack plans
According to the information, the 15-year-old arrested in North Rhine-Westphalia has already obtained gasoline. This tip came from the German security authorities, explained Chief Public Prosecutor Holger Heming in Düsseldorf. However, no fuel was found during searches. There was a “very concrete thinking model” for planning the crime. However, there is no information that the two youths had obtained a small truck. According to information from security circles, both had made a specific appointment.

According to the Public Prosecution Service in Düsseldorf, the young people planned their attack based on IS objectives and procedures. They therefore planned to leave the country after the attack to join the foreign terrorist IS group “Khorasan Province”. This IS branch has been waging an armed conflict with the militant Islamist Taliban in Afghanistan for years.

The senior public prosecutor spoke of ideologically aligned sympathizers. There was no actual membership or actual contact. Searches related to the 15-year-old seized storage media that has yet to be assessed.

The younger man is accused, among other things, of conspiracy to commit a crime, namely treasonous murder from base motives, and of preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state, the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Düsseldorf said. According to the Ministry of the Interior of North Rhine-Westphalia, the man is German-Afghan. According to the Brandenburg Ministry of the Interior, the 16-year-old has Russian citizenship.

The German Minister of the Interior warns of attacks
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser warned against attacks in light of the arrests and the Gaza war. “Islamist terrorist organizations, but also Islamic individual perpetrators, pose a significant danger that always exists,” the SPD politician told the Editorial Network Germany (RND). It is thanks to the Federal Criminal Police that about 170 channels or content have now been removed from the Telegram network alone, “which were used to spread disgusting anti-Semitic and Islamic propaganda,” said Faeser.

The alleged plans of the young people are reminiscent of the attack on December 19, 2016 on the Memorial Church in Berlin. At that moment, an Islamist terrorist drove into the Christmas market in a hijacked truck. A total of thirteen people died as a result of the crime, one of which died years later.