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CRIME

Inept crooks blast roof off bank outside Berlin

Criminals used so much explosive while trying to rob a bank near Berlin on Wednesday night that they blasted a wall and part of the roof off the building - and may not even have got away with any loot.

Published: 26 November 2015 12:00 CET
Inept crooks blast roof off bank outside Berlin
Photo: DPA

Three men were spotted fleeing in a car from the bank in Groß Leuthen, Brandenburg at around 2:20am by a nearby resident.

The entrance to the bank was seriously damaged, with the roof partly blown off and one wall fallen in, but police said the building was not in danger of collapse on Thursday morning.

Police were unable immediately to confirm whether any money had been stolen from the building, but forensic specialists from the state police were on the scene hunting for clues.

Neither could they confirm whether Michael Caine had been on the scene to rebuke the explosives specialist with his famous line from The Italian Job.

No-one was hurt in the explosion.

The raid is the latest in a series of blasts to hit banks across Germany, with several recorded in Brandenburg and in North Rhine-Westphalia.

But the robberies usually take place in banks close to an Autobahn so that the thieves can make a quick getaway.

State police in Düsseldorf said earlier this month that there had been several million euros' worth of damage and thefts in the series of heists.

Federal police said that there had been 63 explosive attacks on banks so far this year, compared with 116 in the whole of 2014.

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CRIME

Germany arrests Syrian man accused of plotting to kill soldiers

German authorities said Friday they had arrested a 27-year-old Syrian man who allegedly planned an Islamist attack on army soldiers using two machetes in Bavaria.

Published: 13 September 2024 11:17 CEST
Germany arrests Syrian man accused of plotting to kill soldiers

The suspect, an “alleged follower of a radical Islamic ideology”, was arrested on Thursday on charges of planning “a serious act of violence endangering the state”.

The man had acquired two heavy knives “around 40 centimetres (more than one foot) in length” in recent days, prosecutors in Munich said.

He planned to “attack Bundeswehr soldiers” in the city of Hof in northern Bavaria during their lunch break, aiming “to kill as many of them as possible”, prosecutors said.

“The accused wanted to attract attention and create a feeling of insecurity among the population,” they said.

German security services have been on high alert over the threat of Islamist attacks, in particular since the Gaza war erupted on October 7th with the Hamas attacks on Israel.

Police shot dead a man in Munich this month after he opened fire on officers in what was being treated as a suspected “terrorist attack” on the Israeli consulate in Munich.

The shootout fell on the anniversary of the kidnap and killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games by Palestinian militants.

The 18-year-old suspect had previously been investigated by authorities in his home country Austria on suspicion of links to terrorism but the case had been dropped.

The incident capped a string of attacks in Germany, which have stirred a sense of insecurity in Germany and fed a bitter debate of immigration.

Three people were killed last month in a suspected Islamist stabbing at a festival in the western city of Solingen.

READ ALSO: ‘Ban asylum seekers’ – How Germany is reacting to Solingen attack

The suspect in the attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State group, was a Syrian man who had been slated for deportation from Germany.

A federal interior ministry spokesman said if an Islamist motive was confirmed in the latest foiled attack, it would be “further evidence of the high threat posed by Islamist terrorism in Germany, which was recently demonstrated by the serious crimes in Mannheim and the attack in Solingen, but also by acts that were fortunately prevented by the timely intervention of the security authorities”.

The Solingen stabbing followed a knife attack in the city of Mannheim in May, which left a policeman dead, and which had also been linked to Islamism by officials.

Germany has responded to the attacks by taking steps to tighten immigration controls and knife laws.

READ ALSO: Debt, migration and the far-right – the big challenges facing Germany this autumn

The government has announced new checks along all of its borders and promised to speed up deportations of migrants who have no right to stay in Germany.

The number of people considered Islamist extremists in Germany fell slightly from 27,480 in 2022 to 27,200 last year, according to a report from the federal domestic intelligence agency.

But Interior Minister Nancy Faeser warned in August that “the threat posed by Islamist terrorism remains high”.

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