– The alleged attack weapon is a car, said a statement from the Cologne police at 6pm on New Year’s Eve.
The three arrested are believed to have links to a Tajik who was arrested on Christmas Eve, says police chief Johannes Hermann.
The Tajik man was arrested on the same day that Austria also announced that three people had been arrested in Vienna.
According to the German newspaper Bild, the four Tajiks allegedly wanted to carry out attacks on behalf of an IS group in Afghanistan.
– Islamist individuals and groups are more active than ever at the moment, warned North Rhine-Westphalia’s Minister of the Interior Herbert Reul.
The investigation in the wake of the four arrests on Christmas Eve revealed a plan to carry out an attack on the Cologne Cathedral on New Year’s Eve with a car, but “in a way that is unknown to us”, says Frank Wissbaum of the Cologne police.
– The three arrested are now in custody, which we are happy about, since they can no longer communicate with each other, says Wissbaum.
The police have not provided details about the three arrested.
The arrests took place in Duisburg, Herne and Nörvenich. The police seized communication equipment during a search of the apartments of the three people.
Sniffer dogs found no explosives in the cathedral’s underground car park, but police deployed 1,000 officers from Sunday afternoon “to protect the cathedral and the population of central Cologne” on New Year’s Eve.
(©NTB)
2023-12-31 23:18:59
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