A Lieutenant in the German military was arrested on April 26th in Hammelburg, Bavaria, for planning and preparing a terrorist attack. The soldier was picked up by the German Federal Criminal Police after a two-month investigation that was initiated after he was discovered attempting to recover a firearm hidden in Vienna airport.
False Flag Attack
However, there is an unusual aspect to this case, in that the 28 year old soldier in question has spent the past 18 months posing as a Syrian refugee, and intended to carry out a false-flag terrorist attack attributed to his identity as an asylum seeker from that country.
In what is an embarrassing security failure, the soldier – who does not speak Arabic – has been posing as a Syrian refugee since late 2015 and claiming asylum, which resulted in him being placed in a refugee home and receiving monthly payments from the German government. Had he managed to carry out the attack, his fingerprints would have led to his asylum seeker identity and, given the tensions associated with the refugee crisis, likely encouraged further attacks against them by the extreme far-right and further legitimised the xenophobic sentiments of the political populist-right in Germany during an election year.
Right Wing Extremism
This incident has further focused attention on the problem of right-wing extremism within the German military, and what appears to be a culture of turning a blind eye to suspect behaviour amongst soldiers. The arrested Lieutenant was found to have not only authored an academic paper in 2014 which expressed the view that immigration was causing a “genocide”, but collected Nazi-era Wehrmacht memorabilia also. No action was taken at the time.
This information comes shortly after a report by German military intelligence in April that 275 cases of suspected far-right extremism among service members were being investigated. Pockets of Nazi-sympathisers have plagued the German military since the end of the WWII, however the problem was exacerbated with the reunification of Germany. Neo-Nazism is a more significant problem in the former East Germany than in other regions, and East Germans are disproportionately represented in the German armed forces.
This incident comes on the back of a larger up-tick in extreme right wing terrorism in Germany in the past decade. With the discovery of the National Socialist Underground and subsequent arrest of the “Freital Group”, as well as attacks on refugees and the hostels they live in, a burgeoning if fragmented revival among the extreme far-right appears to be underway.
Echoes of Dortmund
There are also strange echoes of the Dortmund bus attack in this particular case. The intent was in both cases to carry out a false flag attack attributed to Islamic extremists. It was also suspected in the Dortmund bombing that material for the bomb may have come from German military sources. While it’s not clear that there are any further connections, the similarities in seeking to undertake a false flag attack and the military angle are undoubtedly troubling.
Marc Simms is an occasional blogger for Proelium Law LLP. Marc holds a MLitt in Terrorism Studies and a Masters in International Relations, both from St Andrews. His particular interests are in emerging international security issues, unconventional warfare, and terrorism.
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