Police have arrested a 24-year-old Syrian migrant on suspicion of planning a “bomb attack” on a church in Sweden.
The 24-year-old Syrian migrant is at least the second person to be arrested by German law enforcement in relation to the “bomb attack” terror plot. The agency also arrested the individual’s 28-year-old brother in relation to the allegedly planned bombing of an unidentified church in Sweden.
In a joint press release published on Tuesday by Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office, the Hamburg State Criminal Police Office, and the city Public Prosecutor’s Office, the man was reportedly arrested in the town of Kempten, which is located in Bavaria.
While initially suspected of only being an accessory to his brother’s crime, the press release says that the migrant is now “urgently suspected of jointly preparing a serious act of violence that is dangerous to the state”, as well as the ” joint financing of terrorism”.
“[H]e is said not only to have encouraged his brother in his decision to act and to have supported him in procuring the components required for the production of explosives, but rather to have promised to commit the attack together with him,” the German authorities wrote.
“According to current knowledge, the accused had envisaged an unspecified church in Sweden as the target of the attack, in which people should have been at the time in question,” the document added.
In a previous press release published in April, German law enforcement suggest that both men are motivated by radical Islam, though it is according to police it is unclear whether they have any formal ties to extremist groups.
“The two Syrian nationals are said to have planned an attack with a self-made explosive belt out of a radical Islamist and jihadist attitude in order to carry out an attack against civilian targets,” it reads. “In addition, the 28-year-old main suspect from Hamburg is said to have purchased raw materials for the production of explosive material for a few weeks via the online platform eBay and other providers.”
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