German police have thwarted a “neo-Nazi” bomb attack on a 16-year-old boy at his school in Essen.
German authorities announced on Thursday that they had thwarted the “neo-Nazi” bombing of a 16-year-old teenager in his school, the latest example in a long series of threats from this movement in Germany.
“The police have probably avoided a nightmare” in the city of Essen where the young man is “strongly suspected of having planned an attack”, declared the Minister of the Interior of the regional state of North Rhine-Westphalia , Herbert Reul.
“We probably prevented a neo-Nazi attack,” added the deputy head of the regional government, Joachim Stamp.
Mr. Reul, however, warned that “clues suggest” that the suspect suffers from “serious mental problems” and has “suicidal thoughts”.
The elite forces of the German police burst into the apartment of this teenager during the night of Wednesday to Thursday, after receiving a “tip”.
They found there “16 pipe bombs”, improvised explosive devices, some of which contained nails, a crossbow with arrows and a homemade weapon. These devices were in a state of “functioning” but not yet to explode because the police did not find any detonators.
“Xenophobia, extremism and violence have no place here”
Several clues suggest that the suspect had extremist political motivations: “SS inscriptions” were found in his room.
In addition, the investigators discovered a large quantity of written documents promoting far-right, “racist, anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim theses”, underlined Mr. Reul.
His writings could also be similar to the “urgent call for help from a desperate young man”, according to the politician, who clarified that the teenager was not known to the intelligence services.
The investigators also favor the track of a solitary act.
Mr Reul said the police had been tipped off by another teenager that the young man “wanted to place bombs in his school”, a high school some 800 meters from his home.
As a security measure, this establishment and another college where he had also been educated were closed on Thursday. They were searched “from top to bottom” by more than 120 police officers assisted by dogs to ensure that the suspect had not placed any explosives there.
“Xenophobia, extremism and violence have no place here in North Rhine-Westphalia (…), we resolutely oppose far-right terrorism,” the minister-president said on Twitter. of this region, Hendrik Wüst.
Crackdown in far-right circles
This case has similarities with the racist attack in Hanau, near Frankfurt, perpetrated in February 2020 by Tobias Rathjen, a German involved in the conspiracy movement who had killed nine young people, all of foreign origin.
The police had also found a manifesto of conspiracy and far-right theories in his home.
In recent years, the German authorities have propelled far-right violence to the forefront of threats to public order, ahead of the jihadist risk.
The murder in June 2019 by a neo-Nazi activist of Walter Lübcke, an elected member of the conservative party who defended the policy of welcoming migrants from former Chancellor Angela Merkel, notably caused an electric shock in Germany.
Since then, police operations against this movement have multiplied.
At the beginning of April, the authorities notably carried out a crackdown in far-right circles.
Four suspects from the “Knockout 51” group were then arrested. The investigation also targets the far-right group “Atomwaffen Division Deutschland”, the German branch of the American neo-Nazi movement.
In mid-April, the German courts also announced the arrest of four members of a far-right network in the movement of antivax and opponents of the rules against the Covid who planned “violent attacks” in Germany and kidnappings of “public figures”, in particular the Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach.