Cops nab bomb plot suspect

Syrian man arrested after two-day manhunt

LEIPZIG German police arrested a Syrian man suspected of plotting a bomb attack after a two-day manhunt, in a case that has sparked fresh calls for greater checks on asylum seekers.

Authorities tightened security at airports and train stations after Jaber Albakr (pic), 22, slipped through the police net on Saturday when they raided his apartment and found several hundred grams of “an explosive substance more dangerous than TNT”.

Police finally got their man with the help of another Syrian, whom Albakr approached at the train station in the eastern city of Leipzig, seeking shelter, according to Spiegel Online.

The Syrian man allowed Albakr to stay at his apartment but when police arrived, they found the suspect tied up.

“We’ve succeeded, really overjoyed,” tweeted police early yesterday.

“The terror suspect Albakr was arrested overnight in Leipzig.”

Albakr was believed to have had online contact with the Islamic State group, reported the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily.

According to security sources quoted by the Sueddeutsche, he had built “a virtual bomb-making lab” in the flat in a communist-era housing block and was thought to have planned an attack against either one of Berlin’s two airports or a transport hub in his home state of Saxony. Police had said that “even a small quantity” of the explosives “could have caused enormous damage”.

Local media reported that the material was TATP, the homemade explosive used by militants in the Paris and Brussels attacks.

Acting on a tip-off from the domestic intelligence agency, police commandos had sought to swoop on the Syrian early on Saturday at his apartment building in the eastern city of Chemnitz, about 85km from Leipzig.

But he narrowly evaded police, local media said.

Albakr’s flatmate in Chemnitz was formally taken into custody on Sunday, a day after being detained, as a suspected co-conspirator of a “serious act of violence”.