In the second La Ola wave, the perpetrator stabs. In the middle of block 71 in the Stuttgart MHP Arena. First his neighbor on the right. Then randomly. The perpetrator flees. Right in front of the barrels of machine guns rushed police officers. The perpetrator collapses, hit by bullets. What reads like a horror scenario is part of the state police’s preparation for the European Football Championship in June and July.
“We have to imagine the unimaginable and plan for it,” said Interior Minister Thomas Strobl (CDU). Before the start of the exercise with which the state police wanted to demonstrate that they are prepared for the European Football Championship starting next month. From June 14th, four group games and one quarter-final game will take place in the state capital’s stadium, which will simply be called Arena Stuttgart during the tournament. The police have been preparing for the European Championships in their own country for months. For good reason: Radicals are particularly debating in virtual Islamist discussion forums whether and how major sporting events in Western Europe should be attacked. Declare the Olympic Games in Paris in July and August and the European Championships in Germany to be the ultimate goal.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution also says that Islamist terrorists are openly advertising attacks during the tournament online. “We have been dealing with an increasing abstract danger for some time,” said the President of the Baden-Württemberg State Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Beate Bube, on Tuesday in Stuttgart. But there is still no concrete information, she emphasized. “Spreading fear is what terrorists primarily seek. You shouldn’t fall into this trap and stay at home out of fear.”
In one of the more recent issues of its glossy magazine, the “Khorasan Province” branch of the Islamist terrorist organization “Islamic State” specifically advertises the major four-week event and points to the stadiums in Dortmund, Berlin and Munich. “The advertising is well done, it can specifically appeal to young and highly emotional people who, given the current political world situation, can be radicalized and become perpetrators,” said Bube in the Stuttgart stadium.
Writings such as the al-Naba weekly magazine of the terrorist organization Islamic State (IS) favor multiple, coordinated attacks. Only an initial attack with a knife, then when police and rescue workers appear at the scene, should they be attacked. Attack exactly when attention is focused on the first victims and the wounded are being cared for.
In this respect, the scenario in Stuttgart fits: a knife attack in a fan block, the perpetrator caught, first aid for the attack victims by the police. The second part of the exercise is less plausible. The wounded are collected at a sausage stand in the stadium, first treated by the police, then handed over to emergency doctors and paramedics on the ground floor of the stadium. “In an area secured by police forces that the perpetrators can no longer influence,” a police director moderates the scene.
1,200 police officers practice in the stadium twice for three days. First create pictures of ways in which you can solve the problem. Then practice processes professionally until you can recall them even at night while you are deeply asleep. Reinforce this in countless repetitions. On day four of the training program it becomes clear: the police officers act routinely, confidently and professionally – in these training scenarios and possible variants of them.
But the scenario as such raises questions. The arena is open almost all the way around, comparable to an oversized balcony. Visible from the surrounding high-rise buildings and – for every sniper – a paradise. No one commented on whether and how the high-altitude area around the stadium might be secured after an attack in the stadium. Nor does it address the topic of how drones are fended off. Strobl simply says that they are “excellently prepared to ward off drone attacks.”
This Tuesday, the police units practiced in a clearly defined, enclosed location. Here a perpetrator can only escape via the staircases, and police forces can be kept ready in the catacombs of the stadium. Ideal conditions. But whether and how the police practice where tens of thousands watch the games on large screens, such as on Stuttgart’s Schlossplatz, is not stated in the exercise. We are prepared for that, assures Strobl.
And: The knife attack scenario on which the operation in the stadium is based, explains Anton Saile, head of the police operations department, is one “that the officers know from their daily work”. As interior ministers throughout the republic emphasize before all major events, Strobl also says that “there is no evidence of a specific threat” to the five European Championship games in Stuttgart. But that there is an abstractly high risk situation for the major event. Just what a politician says at a La Ola.
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The original for this article “Police rehearse terrorist attack in EM stadium: “We have to imagine the unimaginable” ” comes from STUTTGARTER ZEITUNG.
