A 20-year-old was arrested in Lower Saxony on suspicion of planning a terrorist attack over the Christmas period. “He has announced that he obviously wants to carry out attacks in conjunction with major events during the Christmas season, and that is why we have taken him into preventive custody,” said Lower Saxony’s Interior Minister Daniela Behrens (SPD) on Thursday on broadcaster NDR Lower Saxony.
After joint research with WDR, the NDR reported that the suspect from Saxony-Anhalt was arrested in Helmstedt on November 21st. The Interior Minister said he comes from Iraq. “The 20-year-old is still in police custody on the basis of security measures. The Lower Saxony State Criminal Police Office is currently not providing any further background information for tactical reasons,” NDR quoted an LKA spokesman as saying.
With regard to the security situation at Christmas markets, Interior Minister Behrens said that the police there were “very clear and robust” – among other things because of the armed conflict in the Middle East. And: “We still have Islamists who are no longer in the public eye, but who have continued to announce attacks in the West.”
Most recently, two young people were arrested in North Rhine-Westphalia and Brandenburg who were said to have sympathized with the terrorist organization Islamic State and planned a Christmas market attack. They are in custody. Ultimately, they are said to have agreed “to kill visitors to a Christmas market in Leverkusen at the beginning of December using a fuel-generated explosion in a small truck,” as the Düsseldorf Public Prosecutor’s Office announced on Thursday.