The suspect is taken into custody by officers from the special task force (SEK) wearing a protective mask.
(Photo: dpa)
Castrop-Rauxel The emergency services came in protective suits and with oxygen masks: they drove to a small shopping street in the north of Castrop-Rauxel in numerous cars on Sunday night. Observers speak of one of the largest anti-terrorist operations in a long time.
The suspicion: A 32-year-old Iranian is said to have planned an Islamist attack and may have already obtained deadly toxins for it. The investigators speak of cyanide and ricin – biological weapons of war.
According to media reports, experts in biological and chemical hazards from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) were on site when the attack was carried out in the north of the Ruhr area. The man was taken into custody.
According to North Rhine-Westphalia’s Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU), the investigators are now working at full speed. “We had serious information that prompted the police to take action during the night,” said Reul on Sunday morning. Now the results of the investigation have to be awaited.
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The investigators were prepared for the worst during their mission, namely contact with the toxins. “The search serves to find the corresponding toxins and other evidence,” confirms the lead public prosecutor’s office in Düsseldorf.
A decontamination point was set up a few kilometers further on the fire brigade premises. All the pieces of evidence that the terror investigators took from the apartment in their protective suits were packed in barrels and brought there by special vehicles and then processed further.
The substances found are examined on the premises of the fire brigade in Castrop-Rauxel.
(Photo: dpa)
The 32-year-old and a second man taken into custody were only scantily dressed by police officers across the street into an emergency vehicle, eyewitnesses reported. Neither of them resisted.
“The accused is suspected of having prepared a serious act of violence that is dangerous to the state,” the investigators write. It was initially unclear how far the attack plans had progressed and whether there was already a concrete target for the attack.
According to information from “Bild”, the Federal Criminal Police Office has been investigating the Iranian for several days. A “friend of the secret service” is said to have warned the German security authorities about the danger of a chemical bomb attack.
Four years ago, investigations in Cologne showed how dangerous ricin is: In a 15-storey building in the high-rise district of Chorweiler, a Tunisian and his German wife produced the chemical and set off test explosions. A foreign secret service became suspicious about online purchases of large quantities of castor seeds and gave a tip. Both were sentenced to long prison terms.
An expert report showed that, purely arithmetically, 13,500 people could have died from the amount of poison. If the perpetrators had planned to spread it with a cluster bomb spiked with steel balls, around 200 people would have died. It is unclear whether the terror planned in Castrop-Rauxel could have been of similar dimensions.
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