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Germany's security chief demands answers after terror suspect's jail death Germany's security chief demands answers after terror suspect's jail death
(about 4 hours later)
German officials have demanded answers after a 22-year-old Syrian man suspected of planning an Islamic extremist bombing attack was able to take his own life in his jail cell despite indications he might be a suicide risk. German authorities are struggling to explain how a terror suspect with likely links to Islamic State who planned to blow up a Berlin airport was able to kill himself in his prison cell.
Germany’s top security official, the interior minister, Thomas de Maiziere, said Jaber Albakr’s death would make the investigation into whether he had accomplices in the thwarted plot far more difficult. Jaber al-Bakr, a 22-year-old Syrian who was arrested on Monday morning following a 48-hour manhunt having been handed over to police by three fellow Syrian refugees, hanged himself in his Leipzig prison cell on Wednesday.
“What happened last night demands a very quick and comprehensive explanation,” he said on ZDF public television. The interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, said “urgent questions” had to be answered as the government of Angela Merkel – already under pressure amid a growing perception that its refugee policy is putting internal security under threat – faced calls to explain the apparent failings of the country’s police and judiciary.
Albakr’s lawyer, Alexander Huebner, told Focus magazine that the Leipzig prison was aware his client was a suicide risk. Rolf Jacob, head of the Leipzig detention centre, said checks on Bakr’s cell by prison guards had been reduced from 15-minute to 30-minute intervals, after a psychologist who had no experience working with terrorists said there were no acute signs Bakr intended to kill himself. He had been on hunger strike since his arrest.
“I’m unbelievably shocked and absolutely speechless that something like this could have happened,” he said. Huebner told Bild newspaper his client had apparently made an earlier attempt to kill himself in jail. “If there had been warning signs he would have been moved to a specially constructed cell,” Jacob said. Such a cell would have had padded walls and basic toilet facilities and he would have been given special clothing, he added.
Wolfgang Bosbach, a senior member of chancellor Angela Merkel’s party and a security expert, told n-tv that, given his behaviour, Albakr should have been under constant observation. “The suicide danger was known. It was not just an assumption,” Bosbach said. Instead Bakr, who had had limited access to an interpreter, had remained in a standard cell. Two incidents in his cell on Tuesday involving damage to equipment had been explained as vandalism rather than signs of a suicide attempt, Jacob said.
Albakr killed himself in his cell on Wednesday evening. The last check on his cell was carried out at 7.30pm on Wednesday; the next was due at 8pm. But according to Jacob, a trainee prison guard decided “out of her own sense of duty” to take another look at 7.45pm, when she found Bakr hanged. He was pronounced dead half an hour later.
Saxony state authorities were already facing criticism after Albakr eluded police as they prepared to raid an apartment where he had been staying in the city of Chemnitz on Saturday. Inside the apartment police found highly volatile explosives and a homemade bomb vest. Jacob said his team had “followed to the last detail the letter of the law” and prison regulations would not persuade him to act differently if faced with the same situation again.
Albakr, who had been granted asylum after coming to Germany last year, was arrested on Monday in Leipzig after three fellow Syrians tied him up and alerted police. He had been granted asylum after coming to Germany last year, and had been under surveillance by German domestic intelligence since last month. Alexander Hübner, the lawyer assigned to Bakr, called the case a “scandal of justice”, adding that his client should have been “Germany’s best-guarded prisoner”. The evidence of damage to equipment in his cell should have been signal enough, he said, that Bakr ought to have been on close suicide watch.
Earlier on Wednesday, De Maiziere said Albakr had undergone a security check last year that did not turn up anything suspicious. “There was a check against security authorities’ data in 2015, but without any hits,” he said. “It’s not clear when he was radicalised.” His death leaves in tatters an investigation into his plans to blow up a Berlin airport wearing a suicide vest made of the highly volatile explosive TATP. Around 1.5kg of the explosive, also used recently in attacks in Brussels and Paris, was found in Bakr’s flat in the eastern city of Chemnitz. Experts say around 200g of it is enough to cause substantial harm.
German authorities have said they believe Albakr had links to the Islamic State militant group and was thought to be planning to attack a Berlin airport, possibly as soon as this week. The fact that they had managed to capture Bakr alive was seen as a victory for the German security forces and offered hope that he would divulge information about his plans including who had backed him. The two perpetrators of two other terror attacks in August, both of which are believed to have been Isis-motivated – a failed suicide attack at a music festival, and a knife attack on a train – both killed themselves before arrests could take place.
The three Syrians who captured the suspect had been granted asylum, and their “behaviour deserves praise and recognition”, De Maiziere said. The general state prosecutor for the state of Saxony, Klaus Fleischmann, said Bakr’s death dealt a severe blow to the investigation. “It would have been a very nice angle to our investigation if al-Bakr – I’ll formulate it rather crudely – had come clean,” he said. “But we don’t know whether he would have divulged anything or not, and neither do we know whether he had any backers.”
Authorities have another suspect alleged to have been involved in the plot in custody, identified only as Khalil A in keeping with German privacy laws. Armin Schuster, the interior affairs expert for the Christian Democrats, said Bakr’s suicide should have been prevented.
The 33-year-old Syrian was the tenant of the Chemnitz apartment where police found the hidden explosives and was arrested over the weekend as a co-conspirator. “We have never before been so close to finding out the details of an [Isis-controlled] attack, so this [suicide] should have been avoided at all costs,” he said.
As a result of Bakr’s suicide, a 33-year-old man suspected of offering him support who is in custody in Dresden has now been put on round-the-clock surveillance, with someone posted permanently at his cell door.
It is not known when Bakr, who arrived in Germany as a refugee from the outskirts of Damascus in early 2015 and was registered as a refugee in June last year, might have been radicalised, but he had been under surveillance by intelligence services for several months. Police were working on the assumption he was in close contact with Isis. It has emerged that Bakr had travelled back to Syria since arriving in Germany, and had spent several months in Turkey, before returning to Germany with large amounts of money.
A police surveillance team was sent to watch his flat on Friday. Noticing their presence, Bakr fled from his flat and, despite warning shots fired by police, managed to escape to Leipzig. There at the railway station he met three fellow Syrian refugees who offered to put him up in their flat, apparently unaware he was a terror suspect until they saw “wanted” messages sent out by police in Arabic on social media sites.
The men tied Bakr up on their sofa and alerted the police who arrested him in the early hours of Monday morning. A picture of one of the men holding Bakr in a headlock, his ankles tied with a cable, has since been released.
There have been calls for the men to be awarded German medals of honour for effectively thwarting the attack, which investigators believe was to have been carried out within days.
One of the men identified only as Mohammed A told Bild that in return for giving him refuge, “he offered us lots of money, saying he’d received $10,000 from Isis, and that once he’d deposited the suitcase at a German airport he’d get more, and then he’d give us as much as we wanted.”
Bakr subsequently attempted to implicate the men during initial questioning, saying they had been involved in the terror plot. Police say they are investigating the claims.
The police had already come under fierce criticism over the manhunt, including why it was that Bakr was aware he was being watched, how he managed to escape, and why, when neighbours from a former flat where Bakr had lived had called police to say he had returned asking for help, they took an hour to turn up, by which time Bakr had long since left.
• In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Hotlines in other countries can be found here.• In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Hotlines in other countries can be found here.