Police operation at Weisweiler transformer station: officers search grounds near Aachen
Following a tip in a confession letter, police are searching the area around Weisweiler power station near Eschweiler. A 48-year-old man from Gevelsberg is under suspicion.
Evidence collection in protective suits around Weisweiler power station
Following a tip from a confession letter, police deployed officers around Weisweiler power station in Eschweiler near Aachen on Friday morning. As DER SPIEGEL (Justice & Crime) reported, forensic evidence personnel are deployed in protective suits and breathing apparatus.
Officers focused on several locations in a field and in bushes immediately adjacent to the power station and an adjoining transformer station. A reporter from the news agency dpa was on site; the relevant areas were photographically documented. What may have been secured in the process has not been disclosed by police to date.
The operation was triggered by two handwritten confession letters, both allegedly from a 48-year-old man from Gevelsberg near Hagen. The letters, sent to outlets including taz and FAZ, contain information about the acts that were not yet publicly known at the time they were sent, according to the two media outlets. The author claimed responsibility in them for the recent attacks on the energy network in Brandenburg and North Rhine-Westphalia — and named Weisweiler as another scene of the crime.
On Tuesday morning in South Brandenburg near Jänschwalde power station, conductive materials were directed towards high-voltage power lines using self-made flying devices that resembled New Year's Eve fireworks. More than a dozen such devices were secured there. According to the grid operator, no power outage occurred.
Hours later, a disruption occurred at a transformer station in Bergheim near Cologne. Authorities also found launching devices and pyrotechnics nearby there.
Whether the 48-year-old is actually a suspect or merely a copycat must still be determined, a police spokesperson said. Investigators are searching for the man across Europe.