According to North Rhine-Westphalia's Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU), the police stormed the suspect's vehicle for several sabotage actions against the German electricity supply. The access took place in a forest in Niederzier in the Düren district, said Reul at a joint press conference with Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) late on Friday afternoon in Düsseldorf. Niederzier is located on the edge of the long-contested Hambach open-cast brown coal mine; Climate activists still occasionally stay in the forest there. Reul said the suspect was now probably on foot and wouldn't get far. It is a 48-year-old man from Gevelsberg in the Ennepe-Ruhr district.
Reul and Dobrindt had been meeting for one of their regular work meetings for some time; A public appearance was actually not planned. The news of the access reached the two ministers after the press conference had already been going on for a few minutes and Reul had announced that the suspect's apartment in Gevelsberg had been searched that morning. "We found a lot of things in the suspect's apartment, namely suspicious substances or objects suspected of being explosives. We can't say anything about the amount at the moment. All of these finds are being examined by the specialists," said Reul.
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Authentic confession letter
The suspect had sent at least two letters of confession to newspaper editors. Both handwritten letters were also sent to the F.A.Z. a. In one of them, the author states that he wants to take action against fossil fuels. The name of the alleged author is noted on the letter.
Reul said that as things currently stand, the letters are considered authentic. Reul described the fact that the author gave his full name and address as “very unusual, relatively rare”. The NRW Interior Minister emphasized that it is now being examined whether the man was really the perpetrator and whether other people were involved. In addition to a possible left-wing extremist background, possible “foreign-controlled sabotage” cannot be ruled out. Federal Interior Minister Dobrindt said: “According to the current status, we have to assume that this is climate terrorism.”
In the first letter, the author acknowledges the attack on the substation in Jänschwalde, Brandenburg, on Tuesday. He justifies his alleged actions by saying that generating electricity from fossil fuels is "a crime" that "results in unbearable suffering. And because the media is doing a shit job of conveying the urgency of the situation and the state is not intervening to avert this suffering, I have to do it now."
The alleged course of events is described in detail
In addition, the alleged crime sequence is described in technical detail. The author mentions, among other things, electric detonators, timers, pipes and a wire with which he claims to have carried out the attack. The information corresponds to those media reports in which details about the sabotage in Jänschwalde were disseminated. However, these reports only appeared late on Tuesday. By this time the letter should have already been on its way. Federal Interior Minister Dobrindt spoke of “clear knowledge of the perpetrators”. Nevertheless, investigations continue. So far it is assumed that there was a single perpetrator. “But there can also be connections to the elements of extremism.”
The author adds that he is not sad “if the German defense industry is affected by power outages, especially as long as Germany supports the genocide in Palestine.” He emphasizes that he “prepared and carried out everything alone”: “Without outside help and without ever telling anyone about it.” He wrote this because he feared that the crime would otherwise be attributed to the “left-wing scene”. “They have nothing to do with it.”
He also threatens further attacks on the power supply: "If law and order prevailed here, then I wouldn't have to break the law and accept a lot of suffering that I would be responsible for because of the power outage and all the power outages that are to come."
The “taz” had previously reported, which also received the letter of responsibility. At the address given on the letter, the “taz” met a family member of the man who recognized his handwriting but stated that they had no knowledge of the crime or his current whereabouts. Another family member declined to comment to the newspaper. After extensive research, the “taz” expressly pointed out that it could not be clarified beyond doubt whether the author of the letter was also the perpetrator.
F.A.Z. also received another letter of confession
In another letter that the F.A.Z. on Thursday, the author reports on further short circuits that he caused - including in Dormagen, North Rhine-Westphalia. A sabotage of a substation actually became known there on Friday night. “I am pleased that there were no power outages and that coal-fired power plants were still shut down,” the letter says. “I am not attacking the country, but the fossil fuel industry, even if that is the same for some politicians.”
The author also mentions an alleged attack in Weisweiler near Aachen. On Friday morning, the police searched the area around the lignite power plant located there and, according to F.A.Z. information, found two launchers. There had already been an attempted sabotage near the Jänschwalde brown coal power plant in Brandenburg on Tuesday morning. There, conductive material was directed towards the high-voltage lines with the help of home-made missiles that resembled New Year's Eve rockets. Police found more than a dozen apparently intended launchers. According to the network operator, there was no power outage.
A few hours later there was an attack on a substation in Bergheim near Cologne. The procedure was similar to that in Brandenburg: cables from launchers were brought over overhead lines using fireworks rockets in order to cause a short circuit. Here, several lines failed due to a short circuit and five nearby brown coal power plant blocks went offline. Because the engineers responsible were able to stabilize the network immediately, there was no power outage here either. According to information from the F.A.Z. The investigators found a total of nine launchers in a nearby corn field. In both cases, investigations are being carried out on suspicion of unconstitutional sabotage.
Even after the incident in Dormagen, a walker came across launching devices late on Thursday evening. According to information from the F.A.Z. The devices are said to be similar to those from Bergheim and Jänschwalde and were equipped with timers and copper wires. This configuration corresponds to that described by the suspected perpetrator in his first letter of confession.
Since Friday night, the police have also been searching a substation in Ganderkesee in the Oldenburg district of Lower Saxony. The background was an open control cabinet that a patrol crew had noticed. No persons or damage were found. The substation in Ganderkesee is not mentioned in the letters of responsibility.
In response to the attack near Jänschwalde, the Brandenburg Ministry of the Interior announced on Thursday a new security center in the country to protect critical infrastructure. The attacks on the power grid in Jänschwalde and Bergheim showed how threatened the critical infrastructure in Germany is and that it urgently needs to be protected. “There are increasing signs that both attacks are part of a coordinated attack on our energy supply,” said Brandenburg’s Interior Minister Jan Redmann (CDU).
NRW Minister Neubaur criticizes the federal government
The North Rhine-Westphalian Economics and Energy Minister Mona Neubaur (Greens) accused the federal government in a guest article for the F.A.Z. acting too timidly when protecting critical infrastructure. “The federal government still lacks important answers,” wrote Neubaur. The KRITIS umbrella law was finally passed in March. However, this umbrella law shifts many central questions to other legal acts and further processes, some of which take years.
"Even six months later, far too many blank spaces remain. There are no guidelines and templates that make concrete implementation possible. And many operators of KRITIS infrastructure don't even know what they should stick to," criticized Neubaur. Critical infrastructure refers to all 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.
At the joint press conference with NRW Interior Minister Reul in Düsseldorf late in the afternoon, Federal Interior Minister Dobrindt pointed out that the KRITIS umbrella law was left behind during the time of the traffic light government and that he had taken up the matter immediately when he took office. "It's now a matter of getting the relevant regulations ready. That's being implemented, that's already being voted on." When asked, Dobrindt said the regulations should come into force this year.
