‘Syrian refugee’ is a German soldier
Print Edition
A German soldier who pretended to be a Syrian refugee has been arrested on suspicion he planned a gun attack with racist motives, prosecutors said yesterday.
The 28-year-old suspect who was not identified was thought to have a “xenophobic background,” they said — while the Die Welt newspaper reported he might have plotted to pin the blame for an attack on foreigners.
The strange case involved a joint police operation across Germany, France and Austria with raids on 16 locations, prosecutors in Frankfurt said.
They arrested the soldier, a lieutenant usually stationed on a Franco-German military base near Strasbourg, in the southern German city of Hammelburg on Wednesday.
On the same day they also arrested a second German man, a 24-year-old student and alleged co-conspirator in possession of objects that breached weapons and explosives laws, they said.
The lieutenant had been temporarily detained by Austrian police on February 3 at Vienna airport when he tried to retrieve a loaded, unregistered handgun he had days earlier hidden in a toilet there. This sparked an investigation that threw up an even bigger surprise: the suspect had in December 2015 created a false identity as a Syrian refugee.
He had registered himself at a refugee shelter in the central German state of Hesse and later even launched a request for political asylum in Bavaria state, said the prosecution statement.
Die Welt reported that the request was accepted, even though the man speaks no Arabic.
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