At the weekend, a targeted act of sabotage paralyzed rail traffic in northern Germany. The responsible investigators are now trying to find out who is behind the crime. Drones and 3D scanners are also used in NRW.
A small cable duct in Herne triggered a nationwide railway chaos at the weekend. In addition to the Karower Kreuz in Berlin, unknown persons had severed the fiber optic cable in Westphalia and thus cut off communication in the northern rail network.
As a result, the backup system also failed. Nothing worked. Long-distance trains in particular had to remain in the stations because train radio to the control stations was no longer guaranteed. Thousands of rail customers were left behind.
It is now clear that a targeted act of sabotage paralyzed Deutsche Bahn AG in the north. The case shows once again how easy it is to massively hit the critical infrastructure by attacking neuralgic points.
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In addition to the Berlin State Criminal Police Office, the Bochum police in North Rhine-Westphalia have taken over the investigations from the federal police responsible for rail traffic. “Our state security department has set up an investigative commission that is investigating the case,” official spokesman Frank Lemanis reported to FOCUS online.
The prosecutors see a politically motivated act as one of the most likely motives. So far there are no indications of an attack by government agencies from abroad, it said. There was also no letter of confession – neither on the Internet nor anywhere else.
The first police chief inspector announced that attempts are currently being made to screen the crime scene with all technical aids. “Drones and a 3D scanner are also used to discover traces.” Because the cable ducts were repaired long ago. Rail traffic had to be up and running again as quickly as possible.
The state security officers from Bochum are currently trying to clarify a number of logistical questions. Who could have known where to strike to hit the Deutsche Bahn badly? Such targeted attacks require insider knowledge. Because the cable duct in Herne was rather hidden a bit underground.
In addition, the security authorities are currently getting an idea of where the railways have such communication line nodes. A spokeswoman for the federal police in Sankt Augustin told FOCUS online that in North Rhine-Westphalia, for example, this point was being clarified in order to take further security measures.
However, all the experts at Deutsche Bahn and in the anti-terror authorities agree that there can be no 100% protection against saboteurs with a rail network of 34,000 kilometers.
According to IT security experts, the cable attack may have been “just a test run to see the effects of such sabotage,” said Michael Wiesner, spokesman for the Critical Infrastructure Working Group (AG Kritis) of the Funke media group. The AG Kritis is an independent working group of experts who deal with the IT security of critical infrastructures.
In view of the diffuse state of knowledge, the federal prosecutor’s office has not yet taken over the proceedings. Although one is currently in contact with the investigative authorities, it is still unclear who is behind it. In this respect, the Karlsruhe prosecutors are not yet responsible. After all, it could only be a matter of a single perpetrator who carried out an attack against DB for purely criminal reasons.
In March 2020, for example, a notorious fraudster and burglar loosened the rail screws 80 meters along the ICE high-speed line between Frankfurt and Cologne. The man failed to blackmail the railway. In letters to the Federal Chancellery, he had announced that an Islamist terrorist cell would attack a train route, which only he could prevent. For this he demanded several billion euros.
When there was no reaction, he took action. The disaster was prevented at the time by the fact that several train drivers reported strange behavior of their express trains. The route was then immediately closed.
During their inspection, the inspectors discovered the act of sabotage. By then, more than 400 trains had raced over the loose track at speeds of up to 300 kilometers per hour. According to the calculations of an expert, it would only have taken five to 30 trains for a train to derail.
There was a bridge and a tunnel entrance nearby. Apparently, the train assassin was ultimately plagued by his conscience. Eventually he called the police to reveal his attack to the officers. The investigators were able to trace the phone call back to the delinquent.
A police special task force arrested the suspect in a hotel in Pulheim. At the end of 2021, the Wiesbaden district court imposed a sentence of almost ten years in prison for attempted murder.
A year earlier, a 44-year-old Islamist terrorist was sentenced to life imprisonment in Vienna. In 2018, on behalf of the terrorist militia “Islamic State”, the Iraqi tried to derail ICE trains on the Munich-Nuremberg route and in Berlin.
The asylum seeker used wedges and steel cables to do this. The terror plans failed alone because he operated with faulty constructions. Otherwise there might have been numerous deaths.
