German police announced that they arrested this Sunday (8) in the city of Castrop-Rauxel, a 32-year-old Iranian citizen suspected of planning an attack using cyanide and ricin. Agents searched his home.
The operation, in the west of the country, in the province of North Rhine-Westphalia, was authorized by the Düsseldorf Public Prosecutor’s Office and mobilized police officers from Recklinghausen and Münster. In a joint statement, the institutions said that the Iranian plan was a “serious act of violence, which would threaten the security of the State”, with religious inspiration.
The suspect must be presented in the coming days to an investigating judge, who will decide on a request for preventive detention. According to the Prosecutor’s Office, if he is convicted, he is subject to a prison sentence of 6 months to 10 years. The Iranian national’s brother, about whom no further details were provided, was also arrested, investigators added.
According to Reuters agency, citing the Attorney General of Düsseldorf, the Iranian citizen was trying to obtain cyanide and ricin, but the substances were not found in his house. Ricin, a protein found in castor bean seeds, can lead to intoxication and death within a period of 36 to 72 hours after exposure – there is no known antidote against the substance.
According to the German newspaper Bild, the German authorities received a complaint a few days ago from a foreign intelligence service, citing the FBI, the US federal police, about the threat of an attack with chemical weapons.
Castrop-Rauxel’s Secretary of the Interior, Herbert Reul, confirmed that the operation, launched early on Sunday, was based on an alert issued by an allied state.
“Germany continues to be a direct target of Islamic terrorist organizations. Religiously motivated lone wolves are a considerable danger,” said Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, adding that since 2000 intelligence has prevented at least 21 such attacks.
More recently, the country managed to disrupt an extreme right-wing conspiracy operation that intended to carry out a coup d’état – at least 25 people were arrested, in a case involving more than 50 suspects. The episode exposed the rise of extremism and the state’s concerns with this movement, decades after the end of Nazism.
Domestic intelligence services point to something around 28,900 people who are monitored for some connection to fundamentalist Islamic causes – the number would have decreased with the debacle of the terrorist group Islamic State.
Germany has been the target of a few recent attacks, including an attack on a Christmas market in December 2016 that killed 13 people.
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