Hunt for Syrian suspected of plotting to bomb German airport
Police find explosives in flat used by man with links to Isil who was allegedly planning ‘imminent’ attack
GERMAN police began a massive manhunt last night for a Syrian man with links to Isil who is suspected of planning an “imminent” bomb attack on an airport.
The hunt for the 22-year-old named as Jaber al-Bakr began after police found “several hundred grams of highly explosive materials” in a flat believed to have been used by the suspect in the eastern city of Chemnitz. Police also made three arrests in the town of persons who were “contacts or at least known to the suspect”.
The explosives were found after hundreds of police officers sealed off a residential district in Chemnitz before bursting into the flat believed to have been used by the suspect. They set off an explosion to blow open the door and gain access. The raid followed a tip-off from Germany’s domestic intelligence service, although the details of the planned attack remained unclear, said police spokesman Thomas Bernhardt .
The explosives found were much more powerful than industrial TNT, Mr Bernhardt said. “Even such a small amount of these explosives could have caused enormous damage,” he said. He did not identify what explosives were found.
Bomb disposal experts carried the material to holes which security forces dug in a nearby stretch of grass and carried out a controlled explosion to neutralise them. Local media said a German airport was the target, while the DPA news agency quoted security sources as saying the suspect had links with Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).
Police issued a wanted notice with pictures of Mr al-Bakr in a dark hooded sweatshirt with an “eye-catching” pattern on the front, and appealed to the public to call them with any information on his whereabouts.
Mr Bernhardt said it was not yet known if the suspect arrived in Germany in the huge influx of asylum seekers over the past year and a half.
The spokesman said the Syrian had been on the radar of intelligence services for some time in the city of Cologne, from where domestic security agents sent the warning “of a serious threat” to police in Saxony on Friday evening.
He said he did not yet know the nationalities of the three people arrested in Chemnitz in connection with the hunt for the alleged would-be bomber.
Germany suffered two attacks claimed by Isil in July – an axe rampage on a train in Wuerzburg that injured five and a suicide bombing in Ansbach that left 15 wounded.
Police said previously they had identified 523 people who posed a security threat to the country, around half of whom were known to be in Germany. German authorities have urged the public not to confuse migrants with “terrorists”, but acknowledged that more jihadists may have entered the country among the asylum seekers.
Belgian police missed 13 opportunities to unmask the participants of the deadly Paris attacks before the events, according to a leaked report. The police report in the De Tijd daily shows that as early as February 2015, the force had phone records linking terrorist suspects with Salah Abdeslam, allegedly the sole surviving member of the jihadist team that attacked Paris in November 2015. The information was not followed up, due to lack of investigators, De Tijd reports.