Police forces from the states of Baden-Württemberg and Hesse have arrested two Lebanese brothers aged 15 and 20 and a 20-year-old Turkish man. The public prosecutor’s office in Karlsruhe has accused them of ‘preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state’. This was announced by the prosecution on Tuesday. The arrest took place on Sunday.
According to the statement, the three suspected terrorists had already procured ‘an assault rifle with the corresponding ammunition’. The investigators have a well-founded suspicion ‘that the two brothers have made concrete preparations for an attack due to their strong religious ideology and profound sympathy for the Islamist terrorist organisation “Islamic State (IS)”’.
In addition to the assault rifle, the police found ‘a balaclava, a tactical waistcoat, several knives and various mobile phones and data carriers’. The latter are currently still being analysed.
The two Lebanese men from Mannheim and the Turkish man from the Hochtaunus district have already been brought before a magistrate and are in custody. The public prosecutor’s office assured: ‘There was no concrete danger to the public at any time.’