BERLIN, Aug 24: A Lebanese man suspected of planting a bomb on a German train has been arrested after turning himself in to authorities in Lebanon, the German federal prosecutor said on Thursday.
The suspect, identified as 20-year-old Jihad Hamad, is one of two men German authorities believe tried to set off bombs on trains last month in the cities of Dortmund and Koblenz.
The bombs, hidden in suitcases and made with propane tanks and crude detonating devices, failed to go off.
The other suspect, a 21-year-old Lebanese man named Youssef Mohamad E.H., was arrested in the northern German city of Kiel on Saturday as he was apparently attempting to flee the country.
The prosecutor’s office said Hamad, who had been hunted by German federal police in recent days, had turned himself in to authorities in Tripoli.
“Based on our understanding, he has since been taken from Tripoli to Beirut,” prosecutor Rainer Griesbaum told a news conference in Karlsruhe.
German investigators believe both men, who were filmed by security cameras dragging the suitcase bombs onto trains in Cologne, are part of a broader terrorist organisation.
The suspect’s father Shaheed Hamad, a retired Lebanese army soldier in his 50s, said in front of the family house in Tripoli he had turned his son in after hearing he was a suspect but could not believe he was part of the bombing plot.—Reuters
