A suspected islamist He was arrested on Thursday in the Bavarian town of Hof (southern Germany) on suspicion that he had planned to attack soldiers of the German Bundeswehr.
The man, 27 years old and of Syrian nationality, had acquired a few days ago two machetes with blades 40 centimeters long, as the Munich public prosecutor’s office announced on Friday.
With them, the detainee intended to “kill as many soldiers as possible” According to the prosecution, which said it was planned to attack the military during the break that some of them take at midday in the center of the town.
Investigators suspect that the individual was acting under the impetus of anradical islamist deology and that the attack was intended to cause panic and intimidate the population.
The investigating judge on Friday ordered the defendant to be placed in preventive detention for “preparing a serious act constituting a danger to the State.” The Bavarian Central Office for Combating Extremism and Terrorism has taken over the investigation into the case.
Last week, a man already tried to attack with a machete to the agents who were inside a police station in the town of Linz am Rhein, in the west of the country, although they managed to subdue him without anyone being injured, in an incident in which a possible jihadist background is also being investigated.
Last month, an individual killed three people with a knife during a municipal festival in Solingen (west), in an attack that was later claimed by the jihadist group Islamic State.
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