Large-scale operation in the Hambacher Forest: Police are looking for sabotage suspects

Kerpen. Because of attempted sabotage attacks on the German power grid, the police are currently searching for the suspect with a large contingent in the Hambacher Forest near Kerpen, west of Cologne. The aim of the operation is to find the 48-year-old man himself or traces that provide clues to him. A spokesman for the Cologne police confirmed this at the request of the German Press Agency. According to observations by a dpa reporter, up to 100 police vehicles were on site. The man had sent letters of confession that indicated “knowledge of the perpetrator”.

The Hambacher Forest is a forest area west of Cologne that has become a nationwide symbol for the fight for the energy transition and against brown coal-fired power generation. The forest lies on the edge of the Hambach open-cast brown coal mine and was originally intended to make way for the ongoing open-cast mining.

Since 2012, environmentalists and activists have been building tree houses in the forest under the motto “Hambi remains” in order to prevent clearing for climate-damaging lignite-fired power generation and to protect the trees from the advancing brown coal open-cast mining. In autumn 2018, the CDU-led state government had the Hambacher Forest cleared in one of the largest police operations in the history of North Rhine-Westphalia with reference to fire protection.

After a long legal battle, the forest was finally saved at the beginning of 2020 through a compromise between the federal government, states and energy companies. Since then, the demolition edge of the opencast mine ends just before the edge of the forest.

Because of the sabotage actions, the 48-year-old suspect has been searched for days. The investigators published a search call on Saturday with two photos of the suspect from Gevelsberg in the southern Ruhr area. Meanwhile, a search is also underway for a bicycle that he may have used.

The attempted acts of sabotage were concentrated in North Rhine-Westphalia, Brandenburg and most recently Saxony. Brown coal is still mined and converted into electricity in all three federal states. On Friday, officers found explosives in the suspect's Gevelsberg apartment. Later, a special operations team stormed a truck at the Hambach opencast mine in Niederzier that had apparently been converted into a mobile home. But the person they were looking for was not found.