In the bloody attack a week ago in a Duisburg gym, four people were seriously injured – now there are indications of a terrorist motive of the suspected Syrian. A similar motivation is said to have existed for a suspect in Hamburg: on Tuesday, the police arrested two Syrian brothers in the Hanseatic city and in Kempten in the Allgäu on suspicion of planning a suicide attack with an Islamist background. They are said to have planned an attack on civilian targets with a self-made explosive belt.
The Hamburg district court issued an arrest warrant against the 28-year-old main suspect, as the public prosecutor’s office and the Federal Criminal Police Office announced. She accuses his 24-year-old brother of aiding and abetting. According to dpa information, he was arrested without resistance during a search of his apartment.
In Hamburg, the police searched the older man’s apartment and three other apartments of contacts. Extensive evidence was seized, including chemical substances and mobile phones, it said. 250 police officers were involved in the operation. According to dpa information, special police forces were also deployed during the search operation in Kempten.
The two men are said to have come to Germany in 2015, but not together. The 28-year-old had been purchasing raw materials for the production of explosive material via the online platform Ebay and other providers for a few weeks. The public prosecutor said his brother in Kempten was planning to do it. The arrest warrant was announced on Tuesday.
The prosecutor’s charge is terrorist financing. The accusation of preparing a violent act endangering the state, which is common in similar investigations, has not yet been raised because essential parts for the explosive capacity of the belt were still missing. A spokeswoman said there were no indications of a specific target. However, the 28-year-old had planned to blow himself up with the explosive belt and “take as many infidels as possible with him to their deaths”.
In Duisburg, too, indications of terrorist motivation
With regard to the knife attack in a Duisburg gym a week ago, there are indications that the arrested Syrian had an Islamist motive. This was announced by spokesman for the Düsseldorf public prosecutor’s office on Tuesday. This was the result of the evaluation of his mobile phone. The authority therefore took over the investigation from the Duisburg public prosecutor’s office. RTL West had previously reported on the Islamist finds on the mobile phone.
Four people aged 21 to 32 were seriously injured in the attack a week ago. According to the police, the 21-year-old was still in mortal danger on Tuesday. Special forces with submachine guns had cordoned off the gym. The perpetrator was initially on the run. It was initially unclear whether there were other perpetrators. After days of searching, special units were able to arrest the 26-year-old Syrian in his apartment not far from the crime scene on Sunday night. Two of his acquaintances had previously given the authorities a tip.
The Duisburg public prosecutor announced on Tuesday that none of the victims interviewed knew the alleged perpetrator. This had shattered the previous hypothesis of the investigators, according to which the crime was aimed at one of the victims. Because apparently all four of the injured were accidental victims, the investigators initially thought an amok attack was conceivable. The finds on the cell phone then quickly required a further re-evaluation of the case.
The suspected 26-year-old has so far remained silent on the allegations. A judge had issued an arrest warrant for him for attempted murder. The man is now in custody and is now to be examined psychiatrically.