German police have arrested a suspected right-wing extremist who was planning an attack on a mosque that would attract global media notoriety, much like last year’s deadly shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand.
The 21-year-old man from Hildesheim, a town in northern Germany, was arrested on Saturday, the prosecutor’s office said. The law enforcers made their move against the wannabe terrorist after he revealed his plot “in an anonymous internet chat.”
The suspect had “for some time been considering the idea of committing an attack in which he wanted to kill numerous people in order to attract worldwide media attention,” the prosecutor said.
The man was aiming to carry out an atrocity similar to that perpetrated in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March 2019. In that attack, a gunman shot 51 people dead after targeting two mosques.
“His aim was to kill Muslims,” the prosecutors pointed out.
Unspecified weapons allegedly intended to be used in the attack, as well as digital files of right-wing extremist content, were discovered at the home of the suspect. He now faces charges of threatening to commit criminal offences and financing terrorism through the purchase of arms.
National media reported that Hildesheim District Court initially rejected the application for the arrest warrant and the man was detained only after the General Prosecutor’s Office directed the judge in the nearby town of Luneburg to do so.
Germany has been rocked by several extreme right-wing attacks over the past year, and there has also been a grim toll of stabbings and rammings by radicalized Muslims.
In February, a far-right gunman opened fire on customers at a shisha bar in Hanau, near Frankfurt, killing nine. In October, two people died when a synagogue in Halle, outside Leipzig, was targeted, and a right-wing sympathizer was charged with the murder of pro-immigration politician Walter Lubcke last summer.
