Thursday, September 23, 2021
Hagen: Syrians still in custody
Stop should “hit full synagogue”
For the Jewish Day of Atonement, police officers surround the Hagen synagogue. A secret service had warned of an Islamist attack allegedly planned by a 16-year-old Syrian. NRW’s Interior Minister Reul is now reporting on the investigation.
The allegedly foiled terrorist attack in Hagen was supposed to “hit a synagogue as full as possible”, according to the state government. Therefore it should be carried out “on a high Jewish holiday”, reported North Rhine-Westphalia Interior Minister Herbert Reul to the interior committee of the Düsseldorf state parliament. “Since the Yom Kippur festival was imminent, it made sense to assume that there would be an attack on this major Jewish holiday,” said the CDU politician.
Whether the attack should actually take place on that day is “not yet entirely certain”. The investigators had found neither bomb components nor bomb. A 16-year-old Syrian is said to have prepared the bomb attack on the synagogue in the Ruhr area city. He is therefore in custody. The youth told the officers when he was arrested that he just wanted to see how a bomb was built, Reul reported.
According to a tip from a foreign secret service, a large number of police were deployed on September 15 to guard the synagogue in Hagen. An Islamist-motivated threat situation was assumed. 200 officers were on duty. A little later, the youth was arrested. He himself denied having planned an attack. A judge nevertheless issued an arrest warrant on urgent suspicion of the preparation of a state-endangering act of violence. His defense attorney has applied for a detention review, which the Hagen District Court must decide on.
190 threats are currently under surveillance
The State Criminal Police Office may take over the further investigations in the case, announced Reul. An IS terrorist is said to have contacted and instructed the youth via the Telegram messenger service. This shows a pattern, because this was the case in previous attacks. The danger over the Internet is “fundamental”, said Reul. “We don’t see who makes contact with whom.”
The Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan had also spurred the Islamists on and they had stepped up their efforts, said Burkhard Freier, head of the protection of the constitution in North Rhine-Westphalia. Currently, 190 Islamist threats and 178 so-called “relevant persons” of the Islamist spectrum are observed in North Rhine-Westphalia. The number of threats has fallen slightly since 2019. At that time, the authorities were still targeting 221. The number of anti-Semitic crimes has also been falling since 2018.