German police Monday arrested a Syrian man suspected of plotting a Takfiri bomb attack after a two-day manhunt, in a case that has sparked fresh calls for greater checks on asylum seekers.
Authorities tightened security at airports and train stations after Jaber Albakr, 22, slipped through the police net Saturday when they raided his apartment and found several hundred grams of “an explosive substance more dangerous than TNT”.
Police finally got their man with the help of another Syrian, whom Albakr approached at the train station in the eastern city of Leipzig, seeking shelter, according to Spiegel Online.
The Syrian man allowed Albakr to stay at his apartment but when police arrived, they found the suspect tied up.
“We’ve succeeded, really overjoyed,” tweeted police early Monday. “The terror suspect Albakr was arrested overnight in Leipzig.”
Albakr was believed to have had online contact with the ISIL Takfiri group, reported the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily.
According to security sources quoted by the Sueddeutsche, he had built “a virtual bomb-making lab” in the flat in a communist-era housing block and was thought to have planned an attack against either one of Berlin’s two airports or a transport hub in his home state of Saxony.
Police had said that “even a small quantity” of the explosives “could have caused enormous damage”.
Local media reported that the material was TATP, the homemade explosive used by jihadists in the Paris and Brussels attacks.
Source: AFP
