Suspicious device linked to flight to Munich

GERMANY’S INTERIOR minister said yesterday that the country was bracing itself for a “Mumbai-style attack” after a suspect device…

GERMANY’S INTERIOR minister said yesterday that the country was bracing itself for a “Mumbai-style attack” after a suspect device was discovered among luggage for a Munich-bound plane.

Police said the device – a ticking clock, some batteries and wires – was discovered in a bag due to be loaded on to a flight from Namibia.

Interior minister Thomas de Maizière praised Namibian security and said those responsible “will not be allowed spread fear and terror in our country”.

“There are signs that it was intended to be loaded on to the plane for Munich,” he said. “I cannot confirm whether there was detonation mechanism or if it was functioning. But this shows at least that the controls work.”

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Security sources told ZDF public television yesterday that there were indications the device was a mock-up, used to test airport security. There was confusion about whether the bag, reportedly bearing a sticker with the word “test”, was ever intended to be loaded on to the plane.

A spokesperson for the airline, Air Berlin, denied this, but could not explain how the bag found its way on to a luggage trolley.

Passengers on the Munich-bound plane on Wednesday morning were asked to disembark, identify their baggage and go through security again before returning to their plane.

Sniffer dogs found nothing unusual in the rest of the plane’s luggage and it arrived in Germany yesterday.

German police left for Namibia to examine the bag and said it would be some days before its contents would be confirmed.

Yesterday’s scare came a day after Germany increased its security alert based on “concrete” security threats, believed to have been passed on by the US secret service.

Since taking office last year, Mr de Maizière has been cautious about discussing terrorism in public and has accused other countries of “alarmism” for issuing general warnings. But this week’s news has marked a change in tone for the minister.

“What we are basically preparing ourselves for is that terrorists will come from abroad,” he said, “and commit an attack soon after arrival, without warning, in a building or public place, knowing that they may not survive.”

According to media reports, the threat involves a cell made up of four named Islamists from India and Pakistan and two men with joint German-Syrian citizenship.

At a meeting in Hamburg yesterday, German state interior ministers said they were unsettled by the terrorism warnings as they face into the busy pre-Christmas shopping season.

“We know that these warnings are for attacks that won’t take place in the Black Forest or the Baltic Sea but major German cities,” said Eckhard Körting, interior minister in the Berlin state government.

Another minister at the meeting told state radio that the warnings covered Berlin, Hamburg and Munich as well as the Ruhr region.

Mr de Maizière faced down calls from his own Christian Democratic Union (CDU) yesterday for tougher anti-terrorism laws and greater electronic surveillance.

The minister said it would be “wrong to use this as an excuse” for political games.

Germany’s highest court last year limited the use of a wide-ranging communication surveillance law to cases involving a concrete security threat.