Attempted acts of sabotage against the German power grid are increasing and there are letters claiming responsibility. The police have found the alleged author's vehicle - but he is still on the run.
This truck, which has been converted into a caravan, is said to belong to the suspect. Photo: Daniel Evers/WupperVideo/dpa
Düsseldorf/Berlin. The police are continuing to search intensively for a man who is said to have carried out sabotage actions against the German power grid. The incidents are concentrated in North Rhine-Westphalia, Brandenburg and Saxony - brown coal is still being mined and converted into electricity in all three federal states.
On Friday, officials found explosives in the 48-year-old's apartment in Gevelsberg (North Rhine-Westphalia). Later in the afternoon, a special operations team stormed a truck in a forest in Niederzier, around 100 kilometers away, that had apparently been converted into a mobile home. But the person they were looking for was not found.
The background to the search is two letters of confession that were received by several media companies and are also available to the German Press Agency. “The knowledge that is revealed in these letters is clear perpetrator knowledge,” said Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU).
The possible motive
Regarding the motive, Dobrindt said it was most likely “climate terrorism” by a lone perpetrator. A letter of responsibility states: “Generating electricity from fossil fuels is a crime.”
North Rhine-Westphalia Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) said that anyone who endangers the power supply to hospitals in the name of climate protection is not saving anything but endangering lives. “No ideology is a good excuse,” emphasized Reul.
What is striking is that the places are close to areas where brown coal is still mined. According to the industry association Debriv, there is active opencast mining in Germany in North Rhine-Westphalia, in the south of Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt as well as in the east and west of Saxony.
First location in the south of Brandenburg
On Tuesday morning there was an attack on the power supply in the south of Brandenburg. According to dpa information, more than 20 home-made rockets were used to direct conductive material towards the high-voltage lines in the Turnow-Preilack substation not far from the Jänschwalde power plant. In two cases there was a short circuit. According to the network operator, there was no power outage. After the sabotage of the power grid, the police are investigating, among other things, the formation of a terrorist organization.
Second location near Cologne
On the same evening there was a malfunction at a substation in Bergheim near Cologne. Launchers and pyrotechnics were also found here. According to RWE Power, five lignite-fired power plant blocks at the Niederaussem and Neurath power plant locations went offline. Several of them later went back into operation, but one is not scheduled to come back online until next week. However, the general power supply was secured at all times.
Further cases in NRW
On Thursday evening, a walker discovered suspected launchers at a substation in Dormagen between Cologne and Düsseldorf and alerted the police. Following a tip from a letter of confession, the police also searched the area around the Weisweiler power plant near Aachen on Friday.
On Friday evening there was a major police operation at a power plant in Hamm. As a dpa reporter reported, numerous police cars came to the location on a country road near a forest. A helicopter was also used. A police spokesman said it was a former power plant that had been out of operation for a long time.
New case in Saxony
According to Interior Minister Armin Schuster (CDU), the police also discovered “unknown explosive devices” in Saxony. The police had secured four objects at two locations, Schuster said on Friday. Evidence of this also emerged from a letter of confession. The Görlitz police department had confirmed an operation north of Bautzen.
Can power systems be better protected?
As a consequence of the incidents, NRW Interior Minister Reul called for critical infrastructure to be better protected. This requires clear rights and modern technology, such as cameras, sensors and alarm systems.
Related topics
North Rhine-WestphaliaSaxonyCDUGermanyAlexander Dobrindt
Critical infrastructure refers to all those areas whose impairment or failure can lead to supply bottlenecks, disruptions to public safety and other dramatic consequences. These include, for example, energy, information technology, transport, traffic, health, water, nutrition, finance and insurance, government and administration as well as media.
“In this way we make it unnecessarily easy for assassins”
The head of the transmission system operator Amprion, Christoph Müller, sees politics as a challenge. "The economy has to make a lot of information about electricity and gas networks public and put it online. In this way, we make it unnecessarily easy for attackers - no matter where they come from," Müller told the "Rheinische Post". He called for relaxed transparency regulations and permission to regularly fly over and monitor lines with drones. Companies must also be allowed to use cameras to observe not only their own premises, but also the surrounding area.
Amprion is one of four large transmission system operators in Germany and is primarily active in the west and southwest. According to the company, Amprion's transmission network extends over around 11,000 kilometers of high-voltage lines from the North Sea to the Alps across seven federal states, including North Rhine-Westphalia.
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