Suspected attack plans in North Rhine-Westphalia: Two men on the loose again

After three men were taken into custody in Hagen and Unna for suspected attack plans, two have already been released. The police confirmed this in response to a dpa request. The released men are two Syrians aged 20 and 24 from Hagen. The police confirmed a corresponding report from the “Westfalenpost”.

The third man - a 33-year-old German who converted to Islam - was still in police custody on Friday. In his case, the “danger forecast could be made more concrete,” according to the police.

According to security circles, there is suspicion of ideological proximity to the terrorist militia Islamic State (IS). The North Rhine-Westphalian Office for the Protection of the Constitution had been targeting the men since the beginning of the year. Recently, the danger of implementing attack plans has become more and more concrete.

According to the security circles, the three were monitored more and more intensively because they had become more radicalized. They had repeatedly exchanged attack ideas and plans with each other.

As the plans became more concrete, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution presented its findings in a so-called case conference and the police planned preventive access, dpa learned from security circles.

“There are criminal investigations against all three people.”

A special operations team took the three men into custody on Thursday evening. According to investigators, their apartments were then searched. Among other things, documents and data carriers were confiscated, it said. The evaluation was still ongoing at first. “There are criminal investigations against all three people,” the investigators said.

The police in North Rhine-Westphalia are allowed to preventively take people into custody for up to 14 days in a suspected terrorist case if a judge decides so. If the suspicion is not confirmed, custody must be lifted.

NRW Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) said on Friday: "The North Rhine-Westphalian Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the NRW police showed yesterday how well our security architecture works when all the cogs work together. These guys lost themselves in attack fantasies and believed they were invisible. But: Our Office for the Protection of the Constitution sees more than they would like, and our police strike before they do."