Olaf Lindner, the new president of the German Federal Police Special Forces Directorate, has warned that German authorities expect “complex” terror attacks to be attempted in Germany in the future.
Lindner, the former head of Germany’s top anti-terror unit GSG 9, made his remarks at the European Police Congress in Berlin this week, Kronen Zeitung reports.
“Fortunately, in Germany, we have so far been spared a large complex scenario, but that does not mean that it will not be our future, maybe even in the near future,” Lindner warned.
Olaf Lindner, commander of the Germany police counter-terrorism unit GSG9 speaks to the press in the western German city of Bonn on September 14, 2012. / OLIVER BERG/AFP/GettyImages
According to Lindner, more cooperation between agencies within Germany and more cooperation between intelligence and police across Europe was needed in order to prevent more terror attacks.
“I see this as an urgent necessity, not only with regard to the police, but also, in particular, between intelligence services and the police units, but also the military, which has to be expanded,” he said.
One key aspect that has led to many fatalities during terror events has been a lack of thorough medical training for anti-terror units as many emergency personnel are not always able to operate in areas during terror events.
Lindner said that he would be pushing for more medical training for anti-terror units like GSG 9 to prevent deaths at the scene of attacks with a new “Tactical Medicine” initiative.
Europe has been inundated with terror attacks over the last two years, with 35 attacks occurring last year alone.
While more complex attacks like the 2005 7/7 London bombings or the 2015 Paris Bataclan attack have been replaced with often lone-wolf style attacks like the Berlin Christmas market massacre, many other complex attacks have been thwarted.
In 2016, a group of Syrian asylum seekers in Dusseldorf planned a similar attack to the Bataclan massacre and according to the Federal Court of Justice (BGH), the terror suspects, who were coordinating with Islamic State, were in the advanced stages of their plot before their arrest.
In November, six more Syrian migrants affiliated with the Islamic State were arrested across Germany plotting a coordinated “mass casualty” attack.