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Terror suspect arrested in Austria over 2018 Germany train sabotage

German and Austrian authorities have arrested an Iraqi man suspected of committing "terrorist attacks" by sabotaging railway lines in Germany last year, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Published: 27 March 2019 10:56 CET

Terror suspect arrested in Austria over 2018 Germany train sabotage

Police search the tracks on the ICE line between Nuremberg and Munich in October 2018. Photo: DPA

They said the 42-year-old man is suspected, along with others, of having strung a steel rope across the tracks running between the southern German cities of Munich and Nuremberg, damaging the front window of a high speed ICE train in October last year.

In another case in December last year, cement blocks were put on the tracks. Islamic State (IS) flags and writings in Arabic were found near the crime scenes, Vienna prosecutors said.

They said the group's aim had been to derail trains.

The man was arrested on Monday “under suspicion to have carried out terrorist attacks on railways in Germany in October and December 2018.”

Austrian and German authorities worked together in their investigations leading to Monday's arrest, according to a press release by criminal investigators in Germany's southern state of Bavaria.

Austrian media reported the father-of-five was working at a security company with access to football stadiums.

Germany is on alert following several jihadist attacks in recent years.

The most deadly was committed in 2016 by 23-year-old Tunisian Anis Amri, who killed 12 people when he stole a truck and ploughed it through a Berlin Christmas market.

Member comments

Anonymous - 28 March 2019 at 16:19 CET

Another Merkel success story!

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Swedish government shelves plans for two fast train links

In an announcement slipped out just before Christmas Eve, the government said it had instructed the Swedish Transport Administration to stop all planning for the Borås to Gothenburg link, stop the ongoing work on linking Hässleholm and Lund.

“The government wants investments made in the railway system to first and foremost make it easier for commuting and cargo traffic, because that promotes jobs and growth,” infrastructure minister Andreas Carlson said in a press release. “Our approach is for all investments in the railways that are made to be more cost effective than if the original plan for new trunk lines was followed.”

Ulf Olsson, the Social Democrat mayor in Borås, told the TT newswire that the decision was “a catastrophe”.

“We already have Sweden’s slowest railway, so it’s totally unrealistic to try to build on the existing railway,” he said. We are Sweden’s third biggest commuting region and have no functioning rail system, and to release this the day before Christmas Eve is pretty symptomatic.”

Per Tryding, the deputy chief executive for the Southern Sweden Chamber of Commerce, complained that the decision meant Skåne, Sweden’s most southerly county, would now have no major rail infrastructure projects.

“Now the only big investment in Skåne which was in the plan is disappearing, and Skåne already lay far behind Gothenburg and Stockholm,” he said.

“This is going to cause real problems and one thing that is certain that it’s going to take a very long time, whatever they eventually decide. It’s extremely strange to want to first suspend everything and then do an analysis instead of doing it the other way around.”

The government’s instructions to the transport agency will also mean that there will be no further planning on the so-called central parts of the new planned trunk lines, between Linköping and Borås and Hässleholm and Jönköping.

Carlson said that the government was prioritising “the existing rail network, better road standards, and a build-out of charging infrastructure”.

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