Authorities in Germany have arrested two brothers, both Syrian nationals, on suspicion of planning to carry out an Islamist terror attack on a packed church in Sweden, a joint press release by state and federal police and the public prosecutor’s office revealed on Tuesday, May 23rd.
In the joint press release by the German federal police, Hamburg state police, and the Hamburg public prosecutor’s office, authorities say that the two brothers, 24-year-old Ahmad K. and 28-year-old Anas K., were arrested for preparing to detonate a homemade explosive device at an unspecified church in Sweden, the Berlin-based newspaper Die Welt reports.
While 28-year-old Anas K., the case’s primary suspect, was arrested at his home in Hamburg during the early morning hours of April 25th, his brother, 24-year-old Ahmad. K., who was initially only suspected of being an accessory, was arrested on Tuesday, May 23rd, at his apartment in Kempten, Bavaria.
Upon carrying out searches of the brothers’ residences, investigators from the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) recovered evidence linking the men to the planned attack, including bomb-making chemicals and clues pointing to the alleged target of the attack on a number of burner cell phones and computers.
Following the raids, Chief Public Prosecutor Liddy Oechtering said:
According to the continued investigations, there is now an urgent suspicion of joint preparation of a serious act of violence threatening the state against the suspect, who lives in Kempten and was initially only suspected of being an accessory.
“According to current intelligence, the suspects had targeted an unspecified church in Sweden where people were supposed to have been at the time,” Oechtering added.
Contrary to investigators’ initial findings, Ahmad K. is thought not only to have encouraged his older brother to attack Swedish Christians but also to have helped with the procurement of the chemicals needed to make the explosives. The 24-year-old, who entered Germany as an asylum seeker by way of the Balkan route in November of 2015, is also believed to have promised to carry out the attack with his older brother.
The bomb-making chemicals were ordered from eBay and China, according to a report from Bild. Special forces discovered chemicals, including a package of urea fertilizer and hydrogen peroxide in Anas K’s fridge, both of which can be used to make explosives. A urea nitrate bomb, for example, was used in the 1993 terrorist attack against the World Trade Center in New York City.
The Swedish Security Police does not want to comment on what is known about the current case. Säpo’s press secretary Fredrik Hultgren-Friberg wrote in an email to Fria Tider:
Questions relating to this are referred by the Security Police to German authorities. In general, the Security Police has an ongoing and well-developed collaboration with several other countries’ security services,
The pair remains in police custody.
