German security forces apprehended a suspected terrorist, who was allegedly plotting to carry out an attack on soldiers operating a machete in the state of Bavaria, prosecutors stated. A 27-year-old man from Syria with supposed terrorist leanings is accused of plotting to kill soldiers with two machetes during their lunch pause in the town of Hof, in north-eastern Bavaria.
The suspect had already purchased the weapons but was confined after police received a “tip-off from a witness close to the charged,” Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann expressed. The man is blamed for planning a serious act of fierce subversion and has been remanded in custody.
The action comes weeks after a Syrian asylum petitioner allegedly killed three people in the western German city of Solingen, reigniting discussions on the country’s migration and deportation policies. The Munich public prosecutor’s office expressed the suspect arrived in Germany 10 years ago and relishes subsidiary protection, a status that involves migrants who do not qualify as refugees but are recognized to meet a risk of suffering serious harm if they return to their country of origin.
“The accused has no previous convictions,” prosecutors stated, and there were no programs to deport him. The local authorities expressed the man was renting a house in Hof, a town that hosts a technical reconnaissance team of Germany’s Bundeswehr. The mayor of Hof, Eva Döhla, thanked the police for their intervention and expressed her shock at the planned attack.
“There has never been anything like this in Hof before – living together with more than 48,000 people from 127 countries has always been peaceful, and we will do everything we can to ensure that this remains the case in the future,”
she stated.
“I am therefore wholeheartedly grateful to the police and security forces for their decisive action in preventing a terrible crime,”
Döhla said.
Herrmann expressed authorities are investigating whether the planned invasion in Hof was linked to the incident in Solingen, with a counter-terrorist unit handling the issue. The interior minister said that the relationships, the environment and the criminal history of the blamed must first be clarified in more detail. Authorities have “no concrete indications” of further actions, Herrmann said, but he cautioned that the danger of terrorist attacks has risen again throughout Europe since Oct. 7.
