Nadja Niesen, a state prosecutor, on Thursday discusses the arrest of a German soldier who she said planned an attack motivated by anti-foreigner sentiment. (Michael Probst / Associated Press)
Erik Kirschbaum

A German army officer posed for months as a Syrian refugee with the aim of carrying out a violent attack, prosecutors said after the 28-year-old’s arrest on Thursday.

The first lieutentant — identified in German media reports only as "Franco A." — had managed to fulfill all his military duties while posing as a refugee for more than a year, authorities said.

“The man was evidently leading a dual life,” Nadja Niesen of the state prosecutors office in Frankfurt told reporters.

She said he had appeared one day in December 2015 at a refugee center in the Bavarian town of Zirndorf claiming to be a Christian and the son of a fruit merchant in Damascus.

He spoke no Arabic, only French, and told local officials that after fleeing Syria he had applied for asylum and was receiving $450 a month in state benefits. He was also given a room in a refugee shelter where he spent time on weekends and while on military leave.

“I’ve never heard of anything like this before,” Niesen said. “It’s an extraordinary story. He was only sporadically at the refugee center and no one seemed to notice anything unusual about him.”

The soldier had been stationed with an elite army unit based just across Germany’s western border in Illkirch, France.

On Feb. 3, he was briefly detained after he tried to pick up a gun that authorities had found hidden in a bathroom at the Vienna airport and left there as a trap, according to Der Spiegel magazine. He told police that he had found the gun in the bushes near the airport a few weeks earlier and stashed it in the bathroom to retrieve later.

Authorities let him go but began closely tracking him.

Investigators discovered that his fingerprints matched those of the person who registered as a refugee in Zirndorf in December 2015. Through surveillance of his telephone, they learned he harbored racist views that he managed to conceal from the army.

A 24-year-old student from the nearby town of Offenbach who authorities believe was an accomplice to the solider was also arrested on Thursday

“We have learned from various communications that the two shared racist beliefs,” Niesen said. “That was clear from their conversations.”
http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-germany-attack-20170427-s...