Turkish-German teenager who plotted to blow up gay club in Frankfurt arrested
Intelligence source confirmed that 17-year-old also targeted Catholic church in city
German police in the state of Hesse arrested a teenager earlier this month for plotting an Islamic terror attack on a gay club and church in Frankfurt am Main.
An intelligence source in Germany told The Jerusalem Post that the state police “arrested a guy named Yusuf Erkocoglu, a young Turkish kid caught planning to blow up a gay club in Frankfurt.”
The Post is the first publication to obtain the full name of the suspect.
The intelligence source confirmed that Erkocoglu also targeted a Catholic church in Frankfurt – the financial center of Germany. German media outlets reported that the 17-year-old suspect has both Turkish and German citizenship.
US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell told the Post, “The US will always work with our German government partners to thwart acts of terror. This case highlights the urgent need to work together.”
The US government played a role in preventing Erkocoglu’s suspected attack, according to the intelligence source.
Sinan Akdogan, a spokesman for the Frankfurt prosecutor’s office, told the Post on Friday that the suspect was arrested on September 1 and is accused of “planning an Islamic-motivated attack with high explosive materiel.”
Akdogan said the Turkish-German suspect sought to obtain chemicals on the Internet that could be used for explosives.
The police seized chemicals and components for the production of explosive during the search of the accused suspect.
Frankfurt has seen Islamic-animated terrorism targeting US soldiers. In 2011, Arid Uka, a Kosovan Albanian, told a Frankfurt court that online Islamist propaganda motivated him to murder two US soldiers at the Frankfurt airport
Arid Uka was convicted of the murders of Nicholas Alden, 25, from South Carolina, and Zachary Cuddeback, 21, from Virginia.
Uka shot Alden in the back of the head, according to court documents. He then shouted “Allahu Akbar” – Arabic for “God is great” – and shot Cuddeback.
The left-wing German terrorist group Red Army Faction has in the past executed lethal terrorist attacks on US military personnel.
The rise of Islamic terror networks in Germany has created new dangers for Germany, the United States and Jewish and Israeli institutions in the Federal Republic.
The Islamic Republic of Iran commissioned a Pakistani man to spy on Israeli and Jewish organizations and launch an assassination plot, according to German media and prosecution documents
A Berlin court sentenced the 31-yearold Pakistani citizen Mustufa Haidar Syed-Naqfi to four years and three months in prison in 2017 for working for Iran’s intelligence service to spy “against Germany and another NATO member.”