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CRIME

Attackers still on run after near-fatal acid attack on German business exec

Two unidentified men who threw acid over the CFO of an energy concern on Sunday, almost killing him, were still on the loose on Monday morning.

Published: 5 March 2018 10:17 CET
Attackers still on run after near-fatal acid attack on German business exec
Bernhard Günther. Photo: DPA

The attack occurred on Sunday morning as, Bernhard Günther, chief financial officer with Essen-based company Innogy, was on his way to a bakery.

As he was a walking through a park in the town of Haan at around 9am, two men approached him and threw a liquid at him. The substance immediately reacted with his skin and caused serious injury.

Günther was able to run back to his home, from where he was taken to hospital for treatment. Initially the injuries were so severe that doctors described his situation as critical. But by the afternoon he was no longer considered to be in a life threatening situation.

An investigation into attempted murder has been opened. The attackers were not masked at the time of the incident and police say they possibly said something to their victim as they attacked him.

While police have not confirmed what the liquid was, they say they are working on the assumption that it was an acid.

“We are deeply shocked. News of the attack has affected us all,” Innogy CEO Uwe Tigges said. Innogy is a subsidiary of energy giant RWE.

“We are thinking of Bernhard and his family and hope that he recovers quickly,” he added.

Police have said that they cannot yet say anything about a possible motive and are “investigating in every direction.”

The Bild daily reported that the domestic security service, which is responsible for politically motivated crime, was investigating.

RWE has long been engaged in a battle with environmental protesters over its open-pit coal mining operations, including at the flashpoint forest site Hambacher Forst where activists have lived in a protest camp for years.

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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