The 32-year-old man was arrested, along with another person, in western Germany. He is “suspected of having prepared a serious act of violence threatening state security”.
The German authorities announced on Sunday that they had arrested a 32-year-old Iranian following indications of a possible “Islamist” attack with ricin and cyanide, following a warning from the FBI according to the press.
The apartment located in Castrop-Rauxel in the west of the country, in North Rhine-Westphalia, was searched overnight to verify the possible presence of these “toxic substances” intended to commit such an attack, according to a statement from the regional prosecutor’s office and the police.
However, investigators found “no clues” about the presence of these products on site, Düsseldorf prosecutor Holger Heming told AFP.
FBI Alert
The regional interior minister, Herbert Reul, explained that the authorities had received “indications to be taken seriously” which led the police to “act during the night”.
According to the newspapers Spiegel and Suddeutsche Zeitungit was the American FBI who warned the German services during the Christmas period.
The US Federal Police allegedly managed to infiltrate a Telegram messaging group, where the suspect first inquired about bombings and then about those committed using toxic substances, according to Der Spiegel.
Suspect’s brother arrested
The man, in the company of a second person also arrested at night at the same place, and who according to German media is his brother, would have considered taking action on New Year’s Eve, but they missed him elements for making ricin and cyanide poisons, adds the Spiegel.
Despite the absence of incriminating evidence discovered immediately, the Federal Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser, justified the police raid. “Our security services take every indication of the danger of Islamist terrorism very seriously,” she said in a statement. It remains to be seen now whether justice will have enough elements to initiate proceedings.
At this stage, the main suspect is still “suspected of having prepared a serious act of violence threatening state security by obtaining cyanide and ricin with a view to committing an Islamist attack”, according to the press release. published by the local justice.
IS sympathizer
According to Spiegelthe man is a Sunni Iranian who sympathizes with the Islamic State (IS) group.
Ricin is a very toxic agent classified by the Robert Koch Institute, in charge of medical and health monitoring in Germany, as a “biological weapon” and is extracted from the seeds of the ricin plant. It can be a deadly poison, like cyanide.
On the images of the private television channel NTV, we see the two arrested people taken away in their underwear by agents, dressed in special protective suits because of the biological risk.
A project of ricin attack foiled in 2018
In 2018, the German police had already arrested a 31-year-old Tunisian and his wife, suspected of having wanted to prepare what would have been the first “biological” attack in the country.
In the couple, who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, the investigators had found 84.3 mg of ricin and some 3,300 castor seeds used to make the poison. The man was sentenced two years later to 10 years in prison and his wife to 8 years in prison.
Germany has been targeted in recent years by several Islamist attacks, including a ram truck attack on a Christmas market in December 2016 that left 13 dead.
