Foiled Islamist Attack in Germany: A Terrorist, Three Heroes and a Bumbling Judiciary

At a finish of any week, Hans-Georg Maassen, a boss of Germany’s Federal Office for a Protection of a Constitution (BfV), receives several rolls of paper from his staff. They demeanour not distinct rolls of wallpaper — and are full of tables with information about a domestic comprehension agency’s stream investigations.

Changes from a before week are color-coded to make it easier to see how operations are progressing. The crowd of colorful blotches indicates how severely a group takes signs of probable apprehension attacks in Germany.

Last week, a box decorated on Maassen’s tables unexpected triggered impassioned concern. A tip perceived from American comprehension agencies led German officials to Jaber al-Bakr, a Syrian citizen innate on Jan. 10, 1994 in Saasaa, a city nearby Damascus. He was suspicion to be critical during Usti nad Labem Street 97 in Chemnitz, yet that wasn’t his strictly purebred place of residence. And there were indications that he was formulation a explosve conflict on an airfield in Berlin, maybe in usually a few days.

The play surrounding his unsuccessful arrest, his ultimate constraint by Syrian refugees — who firm adult al-Bakr and handed him over to military — and his self-murder while in a hands of a Saxony judiciary: All of that has transfixed Germany during a final several days.

A group of SPIEGEL and SPIEGEL TV reporters met with a 3 Syrians who prisoner al-Bakr — widely distinguished as heroes in Germany — during a tip plcae and spent several hours articulate to them. Their fates, and that of Jaber al-Bakr, hold on some of a many critical issues confronting a country: a tragedy of a Syrian war, a fear of Islamic State apprehension in Germany and a worries and hopes both of refugees and of their German hosts.

Their story also shines a spotlight on a work of Germany’s confidence agencies. It appears that a critical conflict was prevented, one maybe modeled on before militant assaults on Paris and Brussels, yet a opening of probity officials in Saxony was an embarrassment. Their disaster to forestall al-Bakr’s self-murder will make it some-more formidable to totally transparent adult one of a many poignant apprehension cases to have emerged in Germany in new years.

Were al-Bakr still alive, investigators could maybe learn in fact how he came to Germany, how he became radicalized, whose orders he might have been following, who was financing his activities, how he was means to obtain rarely bomb element and how, exactly, he was means to promulgate with IS around chat.

His testimony could really good have helped Germany’s heading confidence officials reap critical information that could assistance lane down other probable terrorists. But with Jaber al-Bakr’s suicide, a many critical source of such information has left silent.

‘Really Tired’

It’s day 3 after a fantastic detain in Leipzig and Mohamed, Sami and Ahmed are sitting in a unit of a crony in a immeasurable German city. Worried that Islamists could take punish on them in Leipzig, a 3 are in stealing and have declined to yield their full names. One of them doesn’t even wish his initial name printed, so we have used a pseudonym “Ahmed.” Nevertheless, they are fervent to share their chronicle of a story.

Are they unapproachable or relieved? Mohamed, who worked as a beautician in Syria, shrugs his shoulders. “No,” he says. “I’m usually tired. Really tired.” He has frequency slept given Sunday night, he says.

Too most has happened given then. He and his dual friends have been distinguished in a German press as “the heroes from Leipzig.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel has thanked them for their actions and politicians from a accumulation of parties have suggested they be given a Order of Merit, Germany’s usually sovereign decoration.

The heroes themselves are reduction effusive. “We usually did a duty,” says Sami.

More than anything, they wish to opposite a indictment done by al-Bakr before he committed suicide. The apprehension consider told Leipzig military that, distant from being heroes, a 3 were accomplices who had upheld his plot. Security officials, though, contend that a 3 have not been connected to any of a preparations al-Bakr done before to his arrest. By a time SPIEGEL went to imitation on Thursday night, officials continued to perspective a 3 as witnesses and not as suspects.

“Al-Bakr is crazy,” Ahmed says angrily. “He wanted to kill us too. We had positively zero to do with him.”

After a dual attacks this summer — one in Würzburg, that saw a 17-year-old Islamist from Afghanistan conflict sight passengers with an axe, injuring five, and another in Ansbach, where a Syrian interloper blew himself up, injuring 15 people — many in Germany have begun saying refugees as intensity terrorists. The box of al-Bakr in Chemnitz has serve reliable such suspicions. But a 3 group from Leipzig would like to change these impressions and uncover that a immeasurable infancy of Syrians in Germany are, like them, meddlesome usually in a reserve and assent their horde nation has supposing them.

A Mysterious Phone Call

Thirty-six years aged Mohamed A. is a sturdily built male with shoulder-length, black hair with a fear of dogs. He has a mother and 5 children who remained behind in Syria. Ahmed E. is 28 years aged and his family — mother and 3 children — is further still in Syria. He wears a goatee and has black curly hair. In Syria, he complicated automatic engineering and now dreams of being means to continue his studies here in Germany. Sami M. is 26 years aged and used to work as a lorry driver. He is a large fan of FC Bayern München.

All 3 are from a same city in Syria and came to Germany final summer and tumble by approach of Turkey, Greece and a Balkans. Some of their statements are paradoxical and others are formidable to confirm, yet on a whole, a story they have to tell seems credible.

Mohamed says he was invited to cooking on a dusk of Saturday, Oct 8 by a Syrian familiarity in Leipzig and brought along Sami, who was visiting from Stuttgart. At around 6 p.m., his phone rang. According to a story told by a 3 refugees, a Syrian tourist introduced himself as Khaled and claimed that he had perceived Mohamed’s series from a male during a sight station. He pronounced he was new in a city and indispensable a place to stay for one or dual nights, even charity to pay. That write review is one aspect of a story in that investigators are quite interested.

Mohamed asked Sami to collect adult a caller during a Torgauer Platz tram stop, not distant from Leipzig executive station. As would after turn clear, a caller was not indeed named Khaled, yet Jaber al-Bakr. Sami recalls that a male seemed confused — his garments were unwashed and his hair mussed. “I pitied him,” he says. The group offering their guest lamb with rice and al-Bakr ate ravenously, they say, revelation them that he hadn’t eaten a whole day.

After eating, Mohamed took Sami and al-Bakr behind to his unit in a formidable in a Paunsdorf area of eastern Leipzig. Later that evening, Ahmed assimilated them. The 4 of them sat together in a kitchen celebration tea and articulate about Syria and life in Germany. Al-Bakr pronounced that he wanted to find a pursuit in Leipzig. Because he didn’t have any purify clothes, Mohamed loaned him garments to nap in.

Didn’t they have reservations about holding in a male that nothing of them knew? Mohamed raises his eyebrows and sticks out his reduce lip. “I didn’t consider about it too much,” he says.

Article source: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/terror-attack-in-germany-foiled-by-syrian-refugees-a-1116708.html#ref=rss