Police Suspect Sabotage at Power Substation in North Rhine-Westphalia

A suspicious object found at a power substation in Dormagen has led police to suspect sabotage, while a claim of responsibility has widened the investigation across parts of Germany.

A walker discovered the object on Thursday evening at the substation between Cologne and Düsseldorf. A police spokesman told the German Press Agency that investigators had received a letter claiming responsibility. The letter also referred to other publicly known suspected incidents in North Rhine-Westphalia and Brandenburg.

Police had not completed their examination of the object. It may be a suspicious launching device, the spokesman said. Officers were also checking substations in nearby regions for other objects. At present, authorities had found no damage apart from the incident at Bergheim near Cologne.

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suspicious launching device

Bergheim was attacked on Tuesday when cables were placed over an overhead line, causing a short circuit. Investigators later found several launching devices. A similar incident occurred hours earlier near the Jänschwalde power plant in southern Brandenburg, where homemade devices resembling fireworks directed conductive material toward high-voltage lines. More than a dozen devices were found, but the network operator reported no power outage.

Investigators said they believed the Bergheim and Jänschwalde incidents constituted anti-constitutional sabotage. The newspaper taz reported receiving a letter linked to the Brandenburg incident, though it cautioned that the writer’s claim to be a lone perpetrator did not prove the person carried out the attack. The letter cited the “immeasurable suffering” caused by fossil-fuel use as a motive.

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immeasurable suffering