Police detain 32-year-old in town near Dortmund after tipoff from foreign agency believed to be the FBI
Kate Connolly
German police have arrested an Iranian man suspected of planning a chemical attack motivated by Islamic extremism.
The 32-year-old was seized at his flat shortly before midnight on Saturday in the town of Castrop-Rauxel, close to Dortmund in western Germany. The arrest followed a tip-off from a foreign intelligence agency that the man had obtained toxins, including cyanide and ricin, with which he planned to carry out a terror attack, authorities said on Sunday.
Another man, believed to be the man’s brother, was also detained. He was known to police but not for his links to terrorism, and it is as yet unclear whether he was involved in the plot.
The brothers are believed to have lived in Germany since 2015.
The men were put into waiting police vehicles in the small shopping street, dressed in just their underwear and with coats draped over their shoulders, escorted by police in heavy protective suits. They are being held in custody.
The SEK special forces who organised the operation reportedly arrived in the street in a fire engine in an effort to disguise themselves until the last minute.
A decontamination unit of officers and scientists from the government’s agency for disease control and prevention, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), as well as a detonation unit, accompanied the operation.
According to a spokesperson for Düsseldorf’s state prosecutor, no dangerous substances were found in the flat.
Reports in German media on Sunday said the FBI had been behind the tipoff after identifying the main suspect as a sympathiser of the terror group Islamic State, in whose name they said he had intended to carry out the attack. He is not believed to have been acting on behalf of the Iranian state, German security sources told the news agency DPA, describing him as being a supporter of a “Sunni Islamistic terror group”.
The tabloid Bild, quoting security authorities, said the plans were well advanced, with security agents discovering that the main suspect had searched for ricin and cyanide on the internet and bought the substances, with the intention of building a bioweapon.
Initially the man had intended to carry out an attack on New Year’s Eve, but did not have enough materials to do so, and had subsequently managed to procure the missing items in the last few days.
German police have arrested an Iranian man suspected of planning a chemical attack motivated by Islamic extremism.
The 32-year-old was seized at his flat shortly before midnight on Saturday in the town of Castrop-Rauxel, close to Dortmund in western Germany. The arrest followed a tip-off from a foreign intelligence agency that the man had obtained toxins, including cyanide and ricin, with which he planned to carry out a terror attack, authorities said on Sunday.
Another man, believed to be the man’s brother, was also detained. He was known to police but not for his links to terrorism, and it is as yet unclear whether he was involved in the plot.
The brothers are believed to have lived in Germany since 2015.
The men were put into waiting police vehicles in the small shopping street, dressed in just their underwear and with coats draped over their shoulders, escorted by police in heavy protective suits. They are being held in custody.
The SEK special forces who organised the operation reportedly arrived in the street in a fire engine in an effort to disguise themselves until the last minute.
A decontamination unit of officers and scientists from the government’s agency for disease control and prevention, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), as well as a detonation unit, accompanied the operation.
According to a spokesperson for Düsseldorf’s state prosecutor, no dangerous substances were found in the flat.
Reports in German media on Sunday said the FBI had been behind the tipoff after identifying the main suspect as a sympathiser of the terror group Islamic State, in whose name they said he had intended to carry out the attack. He is not believed to have been acting on behalf of the Iranian state, German security sources told the news agency DPA, describing him as being a supporter of a “Sunni Islamistic terror group”.
The tabloid Bild, quoting security authorities, said the plans were well advanced, with security agents discovering that the main suspect had searched for ricin and cyanide on the internet and bought the substances, with the intention of building a bioweapon.
Initially the man had intended to carry out an attack on New Year’s Eve, but did not have enough materials to do so, and had subsequently managed to procure the missing items in the last few days.
We had information that needed to be taken seriously, which is why the police were prompted to move in the night, according to Herbert Reul, interior minister of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia where the operation took place. In the upcoming days, he promised, more information about the investigation would be made available.
A similar scheme was thwarted in 2018 when police in Cologne detained a 29-year-old man and his wife who were attempting to make a bomb out of 250 steel balls and ricin seeds by following instructions posted online by IS. The 15-story apartment building where they resided was the site of test explosions.
Ricine is classified as a weapon of war under the category of chemical and biological weapons, according to the RKI website. It is made from the ricin plant’s seeds (castor bean). Less than 2mg of the substance taken in can be fatal. Although it is not contagious, only the symptoms it causes can be treated because there is no medical cure for it. Additionally extremely poisonous, cyanide only requires very small amounts to be fatal.
Die Zeit cited Peter Neumann of King’s College London as saying that Germany should be concerned that nearly all recent terrorist plots on German soil have been thwarted only thanks to tips from US intelligence services. He stated that although the risk of attacks by Islamist terrorists had decreased from six to seven years prior, “it still exists, and we shouldn’t lose sight of that.”
