The news flash had weary familiarity: German police arrest 28-year-old Syrian refugee suspected of planning a terrorist attack.
When questioned, however, it emerged the man was neither Syrian nor a refugee, but a Bavarian soldier who filed a successful asylum application and, since January, has been collecting welfare payments under his made-up identity.
The bizarre case has left authorities struggling to explain how a German man with no Arabic managed to pass himself off as Syrian and fool his way through a supposedly stringent asylum system.
“The man clearly lead a double life, but I wouldn’t like to say why it didn’t attract attention,” said Nadia Niessen, spokeswoman for Frankfurt’s public prosecutor. “I am not familiar with anything like this. I think it is a very unusual story.”
The man, named only as Franco A, is a senior lieutenant originating from Offenbach, near Frankfurt. He was posted in the French town of Illkirch-Graffenstaden, where he served as part of a Franco-German unit.
In December 2015 he filed for asylum in Offenbach under the name “David Benjamin” and was assigned to a refugee facility in the Bavarian town of Erding. Last November he was questioned about his asylum application by officials in Germany’s migration authority in Nuremberg.
The hearing was reportedly in French, because the asylum applicant said he spoke no Arabic. He claimed to be a Syrian Christian with French roots who had walked his way to Germany via the Balkan route. He had no documents but was granted refugee status in January 2016, including all related privileges such as a monthly allowance of €409.
The allowance was subsequently drawn down from his bank account, using ATMs in the Erding region. The 28-year-old was arrested on Wednesday evening during an operation in Bavaria’s northern Frankonia region; he was to appear before a judge on Thursday afternoon.
Explosive material
Some 90 police and special investigators were involved in the swoop, searching 16 premises in Austria, Germany and France.
In his apartment investigators discovered explosive material and other items, while a search of his army accommodation in Illkirch-Graffenstaden revealed no clues to a planned attack. Tapped phone and email conversations with his friend indicated the man has xenophobic, extreme right and racist views.
One theory is that the man was planning to carry out a terror attack with the intention of then trying to pin the blame on refugees.
Police have given few details into their investigation, including why the man was not kept in custody after he went to retrieve his weapon from the Vienna airport toilet in February, while under observation. He was detained at the time, but subsequently released.
The soldier had no permit for the gun, according to Austria's Krone tabloid, and it did not belong to the Bundeswehr army.
German asylum authorities now face a series of unanswered questions, not least how they granted asylum to a man claiming to be a Syrian green grocer who spoke no Arabic but French and German.
After securing an arrest warrant on Thursday afternoon, investigators say they are at the beginning of what promises to be a long and interesting investigation. “On the basis of our probe until now,” said Frankfurt prosecutor spokeswoman Nadia Niessen, “we have the suspicion that the man ... wanted to plan an attack.”
German military experts expressed disbelief at the lieutenant’s alleged behaviour. Hans-Peter Bartels, the Bundestag’s liason officer with the German army, conceded there were xenophobic soliders just as in the wider population. “But soldiers ... should represent the freedom-loving, basic democratic order,” he added.
