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Two Germany rail sabotage suspects detained in Prague

Czech authorities said Thursday they had detained two Iraqi terror suspects, a man and a woman, wanted by Austria over their role in 2018 attacks on trains in Germany.

Published: 28 March 2019 14:05 CET
Two Germany rail sabotage suspects detained in Prague
Police search the tracks on the ICE line between Nuremberg and Munich in October 2018. Photo: DPA

The arrest came on the heels of Monday's detention of a 42-year-old Iraqi in Vienna, also suspected in the case.

“Based on a European warrant issued by… Vienna… Czech police detained two foreigners shortly after their arrival at Vaclav Havel Airport in Prague,” Czech police said in a tweet.

They said the two were placed in a police cell and that a court would decide on their extradition to Austria.

SEE ALSO: Train suspect arrested in Austria over 2018 German train sabotage 

Marketa Puci, spokeswoman for the Municipal Court in Prague, said the court 
had received a custody request from prosecutors, on which it has to decide within 24 hours.

“The request concerns two Iraqi citizens, a man and a woman,” Puci told AFP. Also on Thursday, Austrian Interior Minister Herbert Kickl said in parliament that the two suspects “formed a cell together with the Iraqi”.

The detained are suspected of having strung a steel rope across the tracks between the southern German cities of Munich and Nuremberg, damaging the front window of a train in October last year.

A similar case occurred in December last year near Berlin when an overhead electrical line was damaged. No one was injured in either incident.

Vienna prosecutors said a technical error prevented casualties, adding that writings in Arabic and an Islamic State (IS) flag near the crime scenes established a suspected “terrorist” motive.

The Iraqi has admitted involvement in the two incidents but has denied any terrorist motive for the crimes, which would carry a maximum life-long prison sentence.

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

Austrian media reported the Iraqi 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 into a Berlin Christmas market.

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CLIMATE

Germany could ‘lose last glaciers in 10 years’

Germany's glaciers are melting at a faster pace than feared and the country could lose its last ice caps in 10 years, an alarming report said Thursday.

Published: 29 April 2021 16:05 CEST
Germany could 'lose last glaciers in 10 years'
The glacier on Germany's highest mountain, the Zugspitze, covered in snow. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Sina Schuldt

“The days of glaciers in Bavaria are numbered. And even sooner than expected,” said Thorsten Glauber, environment minister of the southern region, home to Germany’s ice-capped Alps.

“The last Bavarian Alpine glacier could be gone in 10 years.” Scientists had previously estimated the glaciers would be around until the middle of the century.

But the melting has accelerated dramatically over the last years. Located in the Zugspitze area and in the Berchtesgaden Alps, Germany’s five glaciers have lost about two-thirds of their volume in the past decade.

Their surface areas have also shrunk by a third – equivalent to around 36 football fields.

Issuing a stark warning over global warming, Glauber stressed that the glaciers are “not only a monument of Earth’s history in the form of snow and ice”.

“They are thermometers for the state of our climate,” he added.

A global study released Wednesday found nearly all the world’s glaciers are losing mass at an ever increasing pace, contributing to more than a fifth of global sea level rise this century.

An international team of researchers analysing images taken by a NASA satellite said that between 2000-2019, the world’s glaciers lost an average of 267 billion tonnes of ice each year — enough to submerge Switzerland under six metres of water every year.

The report came as meteorologists in Germany said this April has been the coldest in four decades.

Like elsewhere in Europe, Germany has recorded wild weather in recent years. After a winter in which temperatures plunged well below freezing in February, the mercury rose to 25.9 degrees on April 1 before slipping more than 15 degrees for much of the rest of the month.

Environmentalists blame global warming for the shifts and have been urging governments to do more to halt the damaging trend.

READ ALSO: How Germany is reacting to top court’s landmark ruling

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement countries aim to keep the global temperature increase to under two degrees Celsius, and ideally closer to 1.5 degrees, by 2050.

Climate activists scored a landmark victory Thursday in a case against Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government as the Constitutional Court ruled Berlin’s environment protection plan insufficient.

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