German police recently detained a 48-year-old man suspected of carrying out a series of sabotage attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure. According to the German newspaper Tagesspiegel, the suspect was found by chance when two highway patrol officers, who were not part of the large-scale manhunt, noticed flattened grass along a rural road near the Weisweiler power plant outside Aachen. About 200 meters away, they discovered the suspect’s camouflaged tent hidden in bushes, and the man immediately admitted that he was the person police were looking for.
Investigators later found a notebook in a camper van used by the suspect containing handwritten notes on more than 160 targets — some already attacked and others that may have been intended for future sabotage operations.
Herbert Reul, interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia and a member of the Christian Democratic Union, told the state parliament’s interior committee about the discovery.
“We not only detained the suspected perpetrator of the attacks, but may also have prevented further attacks,” he said.
The suspect also told investigators about seven additional locations he had used as hideouts and storage sites. Police have already found evidence at three of them, while the others are still being searched.
The manhunt lasted several days and covered energy facilities in North Rhine-Westphalia, Brandenburg and Saxony. Up to 1,700 police officers took part in the operation.
Frank Wiesbaum, who led the search, said investigators were confronted with an unusual pattern: the attack sites were more than 700 kilometers (435 miles) apart, while the suspect had sent letters claiming responsibility to media outlets and signed them with his real name — a rare step that suggested he wanted to be identified.
Police were investigating possible ties between the suspect and environmental activists linked to the Hambach Forest, a long-standing hub of protests against coal mining in western Germany. His camper van was found there, but a search of the forest failed to locate him.
It was previously reported that 12 improvised explosive devices were found near two electrical substations in the eastern German state of Saxony. Those incidents were part of the same series of sabotage attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure.
