Berlin: A police evaluation of a suspected plot to blow up a Gurudwara in Essen in Germany could only be completed 10 days after the attack took place, even as the police was informed about it weeks ago.
A self-made bomb was detonated in an almost empty gurdwara which critically injured a 60-year-old priestallegedly by a group of teenagers .
The explosion was targeted at a wedding procession that took place a few hours earlier, attended by over 200 guests. But the attackers could only break into the gurdwara after most guest had left, media reports said.
Investigators also suspect that it was a "trial detonation" for the attack planned on the gurdwara.
German police had received information about plans to carry out a bomb attack from one of the suspects' mother some weeks before an explosive was detonated there, media reports claimed today.
Even though police in North Rhine Westphalia had initiated some punitive measures and took other steps after receiving the information on the attack plans, a final evaluation of the documents given by her took place only on April 26, ten days after the attack on Nanaksar Satsangh Sabha Gurdwara, the reports said.
16-year-old Yussuf T and Mohammad B, the two main suspects in the attack as well as their 17-year-old accomplice Tolga had drawn up detailed plans to fight "infidels" and made notices and sketches on a writing pad.
The trio also assigned different tasks among themselves and picked up Yussuf as the "Emir" (group leader) while Tolga was given the responsibility to procure money and Mohammed was put in charge of "assembly", TV channels WDR and NDR and the Munich daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported, citing the findings of an investigative work by a team of their journalists.
Tolga's mother, who found the writing pad in her son's room, was alarmed by the plans being hatched by the three teenagers and handed over to police photos of the notices and sketches three weeks before a self-made bomb was allegedly detonated by Yussuf and Mohammad at the entrance of the Nanaksar Satsangh Sabha Gurdwara on the evening of April 16, the report said.
The three suspects in the bomb attack have been known to the security authorities in different connection, but the information on them collected by various departments were not put together for a long time, the report said. Yussuf participated in an anti-radicalisation programme of the Interior Ministry for more than six months. Mohammad has been under police observation since he presented himself as "Kuffar Killer" (killer of infidels) on his Facebook profile.
All the three men were also known to police because of their close contact with a radical clergy at a mosque in the nearby town of Duisberg.
Police in the town of Gelsenkirchen admitted on Monday it was a failure that they did not react resolutely to a warning received from Yussuf's school in January.
The head of the secondary school had informed the police that Yussuf had shown to his fellow-students a video of the detonation of a self-made explosive device on his mobile phone.
Several says after the explosion, investigators found the video of the explosion of a self-made bomb on a USB drive taken from Mohammad's house during a raid.
