Foiled explosive attack – urea fertilizer bunkered in Hamburg apartment
A patrol car in action (symbolic photo)
Source: dpa/Carsten Rehder
After the arrest of a 28-year-old Syrian who is said to have prepared an explosive attack from Hamburg, an arrest warrant has also been issued against his brother, who is four years his junior. The man lives in Kempten. The goal of the two is said to have been a church in Sweden.
NOh he Arrest of two men from Syria on suspicion of planning a bomb attack with an Islamist background, the younger of the two brothers is now also in custody. Like Attorney General and Police in Hamburg announced on Tuesday, the 24-year-old was arrested on Monday and taken to the Hanseatic city. Before that the man was out Kempten been held in preventive police custody for around a month by order of a judge.
According to the information, the 24-year-old is suspected of having prepared a serious act of violence that endangers the state with his four-year-old brother who lives in Hamburg. There is also suspicion of joint terrorist financing.
Contrary to initial findings, the man is said not only to have encouraged his brother in attack plans and to have supported him in procuring material for the production of explosives. Rather, the 24-year-old is said to have promised to commit the attack with the 28-year-old, as the investigators said. According to current knowledge, the two brothers had considered an unspecified church in Sweden as the target of the attack, in which people should have been at the time in question.
The two brothers were arrested in Hamburg and Kempten at the end of April because they are said to have planned an attack with a self-made explosive belt. The Hamburg District Court had initially only issued an arrest warrant against the 28-year-old.
According to WELT information, the investigators currently see no concrete connection to the so-called Islamic State (IS) and its offshoots in the two Syrian brothers, but they do see a radical Islamist attitude. The two are said to have been in Germany for several years. It is known that the 28-year-old main suspect comes from Damascus, according to the Attorney General’s Office. The investigators do not provide any information on how the two earned their living in Germany. Both brothers have no criminal record.
Not known as Islamists
The reference to the attack plans is said to come from a foreign intelligence service. The two Syrians are said to have come to Germany as part of the wave of refugees from 2015. They were not known to the German security authorities as Islamists until the first indications of a possible plan for an attack. The specific motivation for the alleged attack is still unclear. In addition to the two brothers, two other people are in focus as suspected contacts of the Syrians. However, they are currently not listed as suspects.
Special forces found chemicals, including a package of urea fertilizer, in an apartment in Hamburg’s St. Georg district, a district around Steindamm near the main train station that is characterized by Arabic influence. This component is used to manufacture explosives, according to a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office. In the present case, however, the bomb was not yet “detonable” and further material was missing.