Soldier who posed as refugee arrested

GERMANY: An officer in the German army who posed as a Syrian refugee for more than a year has been arrested on suspicion of planning a terror attack.

The 28-year-old lieutenant, who has not been named under German privacy laws, was living a double life, prosecutors said yesterday.

Police are believed to be working on the theory that the officer, who has a history of expressing anti-foreigner views, planned to carry out a ‘‘false flag’’ terror attack and blame it on refugees. No details of the suspected terror plot have been released.

The arrested man successfully posed as a Syrian asylum-seeker despite the fact he is of German background and speaks no Arabic.

He spent some time living in an official refugee shelter and was paid benefits as an asylum-seeker. ‘‘This is quite an unusual story,’’ a spokesman for prosecutors in Frankfurt said. ‘‘It’s more than strange. We will have to wait for the investigation to uncover his motives.’’

The officer first came to the authorities’ attention in February, when he was arrested by Austrian police after being caught trying to hide a gun in a toilet at Vienna airport. Though he was swiftly released, German police and the MAD military intelligence service began investigating him and uncovered an extraordinary trail of evidence. They found that the lieutenant, who was posted to a joint Franco-German unit in France, was also living some of the time as a Syrian asylum-seeker at a refugee shelter in Germany.

One theory being pursued by investigators is that he may have posed as a refugee to set up a false trail of evidence ahead of a terror attack. According to this theory, he would have deliberately left his fingerprints at the scene of an attack so they would lead back to the fake refugee. A second man, a student, 24, from the officer’s home town of Offenbach, has been arrested as an ‘‘accomplice’’ in the case. - Telegraph Group