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13 in Custody in Germany in Possible Plot to Attack Refugees | |
(about 4 hours later) | |
BERLIN — The police in Bavaria picked up 13 people and seized a cache of weapons, including detonators, in a series of raids that may have disrupted a suspected plot by right-wing extremists to attack some of the refugees now pouring into Germany, the authorities said on Thursday. | |
In raids on a dozen homes involving up to 90 police officers on Wednesday, guns, bullets, knives and other weapons were found, the police said in a statement. Detonators and several kilograms’ worth of illegal pyrotechnic devices shipped from Eastern Europe were seized. At least three people suspected of being right-wing extremists were arrested and charged, and 10 others were detained. | |
The action unfolded in northern Bavaria around the towns of Nuremberg, Erlangen and Bamberg, and followed police surveillance of the 11 men and two women since early 2014, the police and Bamberg state prosecutors said. | |
Bavarian radio quoted the state’s interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, as saying that the arrests might have prevented an attack by members of Die Rechte, a right-wing group. | |
The state prosecutor in Bamberg, Erik Ohlenschlager, told local reporters that some of the suspects had planned to throw detonators into two shelters for refugees in the town. Several of the 13 suspects had ordered pyrotechnic devices that are banned in Germany, including “highly dangerous explosives” that could severely injure or even kill, Mr. Ohlenschlager said, according to the national news agency DPA. | |
Word of the raids and arrests came as the authorities in Germany have warned in ever more urgent tones against the increase in attacks on shelters for some of the hundreds of thousands of refugees entering the country, mostly from war-torn Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. | |
“Every attack on an asylum shelter is an attack on our tolerant democracy,” Justice Minister Heiko Maas said in Berlin on Thursday. “The rise of attacks against foreigners is shaming for our country.” | “Every attack on an asylum shelter is an attack on our tolerant democracy,” Justice Minister Heiko Maas said in Berlin on Thursday. “The rise of attacks against foreigners is shaming for our country.” |
The Interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, visited Bamberg on Thursday and said that it was too early to speak of right-wing terrorism, but that “such a danger indeed exists, and we have it in our sights.” | |
Mr. de Maizière’s tone against right-wing extremism had grown much sharper after the Henriette Reker, 58, a prominent local politician in Cologne, was stabbed on Saturday as she campaigned for mayor. She had been responsible for refugee affairs in the city, Germany’s fourth largest, and was elected mayor the day after the attack. | |
Federal prosecutors said on Monday that Ms. Reker’s 44-year-old assailant, who was known to have past ties to right-wingers, openly stated that he wanted to hurt someone handling refugee affairs. | |
On Thursday, Mr. de Maizière did not refer publicly to the danger of a possible attack as he toured a new center in Bamberg, set up by the state of Bavaria, to house migrants whose chances of winning asylum in Germany are low. He praised the new repatriation center as part of an effort to speed up deportations, which could free up more room for the refugees who arrive daily by the thousands, straining resources throughout the country. | |
Meanwhile the authorities issued new figures for the number of attacks on asylum facilities, showing a steep rise from last year. The Federal Criminal Police Office said almost 580 such attacks had been recorded so far this year, compared with 198 in all of 2014, when about 200,000 people applied for asylum. The total applying this year could exceed one million, although officials have cautioned that accurate numbers for new arrivals are hard to ascertain. | |
The news of the raids in Bavaria suggested that the authorities not only wish to show the far right that they are keeping close watch, but also to prove to critics that they are not blind to right-wing extremism. From 2000 to 2007, a series of 10 killings of immigrants long went unsolved before a right-wing group was suspected. The only surviving member has been on trial since 2013 in Munich, with the proceedings likely to stretch into next year. | |
The Bavarian police and the Bamberg prosecutors said that the 11 men and two women detained on Wednesday had ties to right-wing circles and “hooligans” nationwide. The group had recently shown “a heightened readiness to use violence and increasing potential for aggression,” the police and prosecutors said in their statement. It cited without further detail an assault on three passers-by in Bamberg in May in which at least one man assaulted and injured the trio and several violent clashes at an unnamed pub in the town. | |
Among the weapons confiscated were a loaded gun and several unloaded weapons, plus ammunition for all, the police said. | |
The 13 people in custody range from 21 to 36 years old; the three who have been charged are 23, 24 and 29. At least some of the 10 others detained are likely to be formally arrested and charged, police said. | |