Major manhunt in Hambach Forest: police search for 48-year-old power grid saboteur
With around 100 vehicles, police searched Hambach Forest for an alleged saboteur. Federal Interior Minister Dobrindt speaks of probable "climate terrorism".
Police search Hambach Forest for alleged saboteur
With a major deployment of up to 100 vehicles, police have searched the Hambach Forest, west of Cologne, for a 48-year-old man from Gevelsberg who is suspected of being responsible for several attempted sabotage attacks on Germany's power grid. A spokesman for Cologne police confirmed to news agency dpa that the aim of the operation was to find the suspect himself or usable traces. The search was still ongoing in the afternoon, as reported by spiegel.de.
Already on Saturday, investigators had released a wanted notice with two photographs of the suspect. In the meantime, a bicycle is also being sought, which the man may have used. Police officers found explosives in the suspect's flat in Gevelsberg on Friday. Shortly afterwards, a special operations unit stormed a converted lorry-turned-mobile home in Niederzier at the Hambach lignite mine — however, the suspect was not present.
Hambach Forest lies between Cologne and Aachen on the edge of the Hambach lignite mine and has been the site of protests against brown coal power generation for years. Since 2012, activists have erected treehouses there under the motto "Hambi bleibt". According to Cologne police, such structures still stand there today and were also part of the search. Whether they are still inhabited was initially unclear.
The attempted acts of sabotage are concentrated in federal states where brown coal is still mined and converted to electricity: North Rhine-Westphalia, Brandenburg and most recently Saxony. In incidents in Brandenburg and North Rhine-Westphalia, perpetrators used, among other things, home-made rockets and launch devices. In East Saxony, police discovered twelve explosive devices on high-voltage power lines. Authorities are currently examining whether there is a connection between the acts in the different regions.
Behind the manhunt are two confessional letters that, according to spiegel.de, are also available to the newsroom. "The knowledge that is revealed in these letters is clear perpetrator knowledge," said Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU). On the motive for the act, Dobrindt stated that it was very probably "climate terrorism" by a lone perpetrator. In one of the letters it says: "Electricity generation from fossil fuels is a crime."
According to industry association Debriv, active brown coal mining in Germany takes place in North Rhine-Westphalia, the south of Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt, and the east and west of Saxony — precisely those areas where the attempted attacks are concentrated.
Source: Google News DE — Crime (de)