Status: 10/14/2021 5:00 p.m.
A 16-year-old Syrian is said to have planned a bomb attack on the synagogue in Hagen. The investigators rely primarily on cell phone chats. His interlocutor is not a stranger.
The young Syrian was on his way to the bus that morning when the special forces of the North Rhine-Westphalian police attacked him and arrested him. They secured the 16-year-old’s backpack. There was great concern that there might be explosives in it. In the end, however, the police only found school supplies.
The investigators also found no explosives, no bombs and no weapons whatsoever during the subsequent apartment search. Nevertheless, there is strong suspicion that the young man wanted to carry out a terrorist attack on the Hagen synagogue. And possibly on Yom Kippur, the highest Jewish holiday.
The investigators did not want to take any chances and grabbed it on September 16. The Syrian has been in custody since then. The public prosecutor’s office in Düsseldorf accuses him of preparing a serious act of violence that is dangerous to the state.
Prosecutor sees determination to act
But there was probably not much preparation yet, it was mainly terror fantasies that the young man is said to have uttered. From the point of view of the prosecutors, however, there is an urgent suspicion that he was already determined to act.
A tip from a foreign secret service brought the security authorities on the trail of the Hagener in mid-September. The warning read that someone was apparently planning an attack on a synagogue, probably on a Jewish holiday. In the LKA North Rhine-Westphalia a 50-strong special commission (Soko) “Dach” was set up, which was finally able to identify the Syrian student from Hagen, who had come to Germany as a refugee as part of family reunification, as a suspect.
Initially, the young man’s father was targeted by the investigators. The authorities had information that he should have contacts in the Salafist scene. Among other things, he is said to have a mutual acquaintance with one of the Paris attackers.
IS propaganda
Investigators recently presented evidence to a judge at a judicial review meeting to support suspicions against the 16-year-old terrorist suspect. For example, they had discovered large amounts of propaganda material from the terrorist organization “Islamic State” (IS), including decapitation videos, on his mobile phone, whose password they had cracked.
The most explosive find, however, are chat messages that the suspect is said to have exchanged with a suspected IS terrorist. The student from Hagen is said to have taken part in a kind of “online course” for the manufacture of explosives and the construction of bombs via WhatsApp. The instructions are said to have been given by an instructor who called himself “Abu Harb”, Arabic for “father of war”.
“Building already explored”
On August 17th, at 11:14 am, “Abu Harb” is said to have asked his apprentice via chat what he was going to do with a bomb? The man from Hagen is said to have replied just two minutes later that his goal was a synagogue. He has already scouted the building. The synagogue is guarded by the police at the front, but at the back he can place a bomb unnoticed.
“He clearly distances himself from having planned any attack,” says Ihsan Tanyolu, the Syrian’s lawyer. The LKA investigators, on the other hand, are convinced that it was not just a gimmick. The length of contact with the terrorist instructor, with whom he is said to have exchanged information on various channels over the course of weeks, speaks for this. In addition, numerous photos of the Hagen synagogue are said to have been found on his cell phone.
The terrorist instructor “Abu Harb” had also turned up in a similar case before. At the beginning of August, investigators in Berlin-Schmargendorf arrested a 16-year-old Syrian who is said to have been instructed by “Abu Harb”. Here, too, a foreign secret service had provided decisive information. Investigators from the Special Structural Organization (BAO) “Hydra” searched the young man’s parents’ apartment and discovered suspicious items that the suspect might have obtained for the manufacture of explosives. Including engine oil and cold packs.
The Berlin public prosecutor’s office is now investigating the boy for preparing a terrorist attack. In contrast to the man from Hagen, however, he is at large again.
The security authorities assume that “Abu Harb” is an explosives expert from the terrorist organization IS, who may be in Iraq – and who is said to have been in contact with other people in Europe.