The two of you are said to have planned a poison attack in Germany: After the investigators in Castrop-Rauxel searched the apartment of a 32-year-old, the public prosecutor's office is now issuing arrest warrants against both him and his younger brother. This was already known to the police.
After the anti-terror operation in Castrop-Rauxel, the Düsseldorf public prosecutor's office applied for arrest warrants against two Iranians aged 32 and 25. The authorities have now announced this. The brothers are accused, among other things, of procuring the toxins cyanide and ricin for an Islamist-motivated attack and thus wanting to kill "an unspecified number of people".
According to a spokesman for the Düsseldorf public prosecutor's office, the suspicion was initially directed against the 32-year-old. Anti-terror investigators searched his apartment in the Ruhr area city on Sunday night. The 25-year-old was also there. Both were arrested.
It is still unclear how concretely the possible attack plans had progressed and what a possible target would have been. No toxins were found during the night search, investigators said. Nothing has been found so far, but the investigation is ongoing, said a spokesman for the Attorney General's Office in the evening.
The investigators see the brothers as suspected of preparing a serious act of violence that is dangerous to the state and of conspiring to commit a crime, namely murder. A magistrate at the Dortmund District Court is now deciding whether the two should be remanded in custody. As the dpa learned from security circles, it is suspected that the 32-year-old is a supporter of a Sunni Islamist terrorist group. The brother was known to the police beforehand, but for reasons unrelated to Islamist terrorism.
The "Spiegel" had previously reported that the German authorities had already received a first indication of those arrested from the FBI at Christmas. Accordingly, the US investigators are said to have infiltrated a Telegram chat group in which the two alleged perpetrators are said to have first asked about bomb construction plans and later also about toxins. Accordingly, there were initially signs that the brothers wanted to strike on New Year's Eve. However, they may have lacked a means of producing the poison, which could only have been available after the turn of the year, the newspaper quotes official circles as saying.
