German police detain pal of escaped Syrian bomb plot suspect

German police Sunday hunted a Syrian man suspected of plotting a jihadist bomb attack, placing his flat-mate under arrest and raiding a contact’s home after finding explosives in the fugitive’s apartment.
Security was stepped up at airports and train stations as it was unclear whether the chief suspect, Jaber Albakr, 22, was still in possession of bomb-making material or weapons.
“We do not know where he is and what he’s carrying with him,” police said on Twitter, advising citizens to “be careful.”
Police questioned Albakr’s Syrian flatmate, who was formally remanded in custody as a suspected co-conspirator of a “serious act of violence” after he was detained the previous day.
Police commandos also raided the home of another suspected contact of Albakr, blasting open the door as they stormed the premises some eight kilometers from the fugitive’s flat.
Police took away a man for questioning, a spokeswoman told AFP, stressing that the person was not Albakr.
Albakr may have “an Islamist motive,” police sources have told AFP. German news agency DPA, citing security sources, said he was believed to have links to the Daesh group.

Narrow escape
Albakr had narrowly escaped police commandos at dawn Saturday as they prepared to arrest him in his flat in the eastern city of Chemnitz, about 260 kilometers (160 miles) south of Berlin.
Officers fired a warning shot when they saw the man leave the apartment block, but he managed to escape, reported news weekly Spiegel, labelling it “a possible police failure.”
Police spokesman Tom Bernhardt rejected the criticism, saying officers had to be cautious because “it was unclear whether the man was carrying explosives and a detonator” and they had to worry about the safety of other residents.
Police later found several hundred grams of an “explosive substance more dangerous than TNT” hidden in the flat and said that “even a small quantity ... could have caused enormous damage.”
Local media reported that the material — which a bomb disposal squad destroyed in a controlled blast outside — was TATP, the homemade explosive known as “mother of Satan” that was used by jihadists in the Paris and Brussels attacks.
Police rounded up three of Albakr’s suspected associates Saturday and remanded one in custody — a Syrian man in whose name the apartment was rented — while letting the other two go.
“An investigation into complicity is ongoing against this compatriot of the suspect ... He has been presented to a judge” to be kept in detention, said police spokesman Bernhardt.

Asylum request
Bernhardt added that the search for Albakr has been extended “beyond the borders of Germany,” with police in contact with their counterparts in other EU countries.
Spiegel said Albakr had entered Germany on February 18, 2015 and two weeks later filed a request for asylum, which was granted in June that year.
Police said they were following some 80 possible leads against the fugitive, who was shown in a wanted picture wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt.
In one false alarm on Sunday, police led a passenger who they thought resembled the suspect off a Eurowings jet about to take off from Berlin’s Tegel airport, reported DPA.
Spiegel Online said that Germany’s domestic security service had on Friday informed police that Albakr had been studying online how to assemble an explosive device and had recently obtained bomb making materials.
Germany has been on edge since two Daesh-claimed attacks in July — an ax rampage on a train in Wuerzburg that injured five, and a suicide bombing in Ansbach in which 15 people were hurt.
The bloodshed has fueled concerns over Germany’s record influx of nearly 900,000 refugees and migrants last year.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has come under pressure for her open-door policy for refugees, while the xenophobic and anti-Islam Alternative for Germany party has gained support.
Heightening public fears, German police say they have foiled a number of attacks this year.
In late September, police arrested a 16-year-old Syrian refugee in Cologne on suspicion he was planning a bombing in the name of Daesh.
A week earlier, they detained three men with forged Syrian passports who were believed to be a possible IS “sleeper cell” with links to those behind the November Paris attacks.
German authorities have urged the public not to confuse migrants with “terrorists,” but have acknowledged that more jihadists may have entered the country among the asylum seekers who arrived last year.

Source: Arab News