quote:

Originally posted by OTD:
Not an act of Terror. The Driver was a German by birth. His Motive is not known. He is known to be mentally disturbed.


https://www.waz.de/region/tote...tot-id213948607.html

That means nothing. “German by birth” does not preclude Islamic/terrorist affiliation. And the German government has previously substituted “mentally disturbed” for “Islamic motivation.”

quote:

Originally posted by brywards:

quote:

Originally posted by OTD:
Not an act of Terror. The Driver was a German by birth. His Motive is not known. He is known to be mentally disturbed.


https://www.waz.de/region/tote...tot-id213948607.html

That means nothing. “German by birth” does not preclude Islamic/terrorist affiliation. And the German government has previously substituted “mentally disturbed” for “Islamic motivation.”

Seems a bit odd for an Islamic terrorist to shoot himself when he was capable of causing more death.

True, Balze. I’m not saying this guy was a terrorist, but I’m not saying he wasn’t. It’s too early to say either way.

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:

quote:

Originally posted by brywards:

quote:

Originally posted by OTD:
Not an act of Terror. The Driver was a German by birth. His Motive is not known. He is known to be mentally disturbed.


https://www.waz.de/region/tote...tot-id213948607.html

That means nothing. “German by birth” does not preclude Islamic/terrorist affiliation. And the German government has previously substituted “mentally disturbed” for “Islamic motivation.”

Seems a bit odd for an Islamic terrorist to shoot himself when he was capable of causing more death.

Suicide shooter? Maybe he got confused.

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:...Seems a bit odd for an Islamic terrorist to shoot himself when he was capable of causing more death.

But doesn't so doing guarantee his eternity in heaven?

Maybe my concern is that even if the perp yelled aloha snackbar before shooting himself, they would likely call it a lone wolf, not terrorism.

The perpetator has been identified as a 48-year-old industrial graphics designer named as Jens R. from the Sauerland (south of Münster in the same state of North Rhine-Westphalia) who had been living in town for a long time, possibly with an intermediate spell in East Germany. Information still keeps changing as usual in the first 24 hours; initial reports said he had no previous police record, later that he was known for stealing cellphones and car radios to finance a drug habit by one account, or for threats and property damage by another.

Sources agree that he became "psychologically conspicious" twice in 2014 and 2016, and either attempted suicide some time ago already or announced to kill himself in a spectacular way, possibly over relationship issues. He was not known as an extremist of any kind, though vague reports on "right-wing contacts" are still being investigated. As usual, there were initial witness reports about multiple perpetrators, like two men jumping from the van and fleeing, but that can probably be put down to the panic and confusion at the scene.

He used his own silver VW camping van, so police could establish his identity quickly. Besides the pistol with which he killed himself (no word on model), a blank gun and about a dozen "Polandcrackers" (Eastern European firecrackers which are illegal in Germany) were found in the vehicle. Initial reports about a "suspicious item" in the vehicle seem to have been about some wires running under a floormat, possibly attached to one of the guns by one account. The door to his flat was explosively opened as a precaution. A de-activated AK and more Polandcrackers were found inside.

Besides him, there were two other dead, not three as initially reported. At some point they were claimed to have been staffers of the restaurant he hit, which the restaurant denied. By now they have been identified as a 51-year-old woman from Lüneburg County, Lower Saxony, and a 65-year-old man from Borken County, NRW. The number of injured is given with "more than 20", six of them critical, with condition unchanged overnight.

This is somewhat reminiscent of last year's car rampage in Heidelberg, where a deranged 35-year-old named as Matthias K. killed one 73-year-old man and injured two, but was shot and taken alive by police. Compared to the 2016 Munich spree shooting by 18-year-old David (previously Ali) Sonboly, response by authorities and the public in the current incident seems to have been smooth. Statewide police and rescue forces including SEK and multiple medevac helicopters were quickly deployed to Münster, and a national terrorism alert triggered to put other state and federal authorities on notice in case that this was part of a coordinated event or copycats would follow suit. Local hospitals went into emergency mode, mobilized 250 personnel and called for blood donations, but limited it to already-registered donors quickly after about 300 volunteers showed up within minutes.

Police have also lauded the reasoned reaction of the population. By now, some of the street blockades have been lifted, though the immediate crime scene and perpetrator's flat remain sealed off. Police are asking for any information and images of the event to be forwarded to them rather than be shared on the internet. A press conference has been announced for this afternoon.

As an aside, SEK NRW seems to be fond of the Belgian neighbors.

Police have officially declared the suspect a single perpetrator. Apparently he owned three apartments, one in Münster, one in Dresden and one in nearby Pirna, Saxony. At his Münster residence, several gas bottles and gasoline cans were found in addition to the previously mentioned deco AK and firecrackers, though it is currently unclear if those were connected to events.

As noted before, he was an industrial designer and reportedly made money by selling a lamp design. The earlier report that his police record was over thefts to finance a drug habit obviously falls under "anything in the first 24 hours may be wrong". He had been investigated over five counts of fraud, property damage, threats and hit-and-run, but all proceedings were abated.

According to neighbors, he changed after he had a fall down the stairs at his house some years ago which left him with some permanent damage; he quarreled with the neighbors, sued a family he accused of having left items on the stairs, accused doctors of having messed him up in surgery, worked less and vanished for months at a time with his van. In late March he wrote a lengthy e-mail to acquaintances which contained vague reference to suicide. Police tried to talk to him but never met him; allegedly city health officials had contact with him though. One Turkish-descended neighbor noted he was certainly no right-winger since he had never had problems with him, he just knew no personal distance and would monologize on end. It all reminds me a bit of the Las Vegas shooter.

quote:

Originally posted by BansheeOne:
The earlier report that his police record was over thefts to finance a drug habit obviously falls under "anything in the first 24 hours may be wrong".

Apparently the above referred to an acquaintance of the perpetrator whose dwellings in Telgte near Münster were also searched on Saturday, while the "possible right-wing contacts" are about a known extremist living at the same adress as his Pirna flat; in fact in an older lengthy document found at his Münster residence, he complained about having been wongly denounced as a right-winger and xenophobe, among a host of other issues.

Of his own previous record, two counts of threats reportedly were against his father whom he allegedly blamed for a downturn in his business success, though he seems to have still been well-off enough to own five cars. Obviously he had no permit for the handgun with which he shot himself and that has been vaguely described as an eight-shot model. Police are trying to retrace his steps in recent weeks in which he apparently had pretty much dropped off the radar.

Three of those injured remain in critical condition at this point. Victims were mostly from the region, but also the Netherlands.

Why don’t I ever see “possible left wing contacts” mentioned in the wake of a terror attack in Europe?

Are all of your leftists Peace loving tolerant people like ours?

It's about the respective pet bogeymen. Whenever there is a car rampage, mass shooting or bomb attack, the left will go "right-wingers!", but the right will go "Muslims!" rather than "left-wingers!". Though there was in fact a recent case in the state of Thuringia where two guys were found with three 25-kilo bags of fertilizer, twelve kilos of bomb-making chemicals, eight bottles of butyric acid and 2.3 grams of processed ETN explosive. One of them was a 25-year-old unemployed petty criminal with a knack for cooking stuff that goes bang, but the other was a 31-year-old wheelchair-bound Antifa type who was also the spokesman of one of the ubiquitous "anti-right-wing" civil alliance groups.

The particular joke was that that group had been awarded a price for democratic engagement in 2016 by Thuringia's state government, which is led by the Left Party. The local opposition accused the latter of trying to hush up any potential terrorist angle in the case due to not giving the investigation lead to the State Bureau for Criminal Investigations from the outset. Of course the one guy said he was merely planning to entertain his crippled buddy with some fireworks, while the latter said the acid was for fighting voles at his mother's place. This is still being investigated AFAIK.

One field where everybody pretty much automatically assumes left-wingers here is official or high-class vehicles getting torched, or railway signals, power lines etc. being destroyed because apparently that supports NATO war preparations, nuclear waste transports or another convenient excuse of the day. Two weeks ago we had one obscure group claim an arson/cutting attack on a high-voltage line bridge in Berlin that left 6,500 houses without power for half a day with a vague justification to that effect.

Banshee, every time there's an attack in Europe, I expect you to come in to this forum and downplay it or deny it altogether. You could have ten guys named Muhammed Achmed Muhammed kill 50 Europeans by shooting them to death, all the while shouting "Allu Akbar, we are terrorists!!", and you would come in here and try to tell us that we are all overreacting if we call it terrorism.

Forget about the incident related to this thread. You come into these threads and I can't recall ever seeing you admit that a terrorist attack had occurred. You always have some very long-winded explanation about how we're all wrong, overreacting, or we just don't understand.

As a matter of fact, that's all you do here. You just wait in the rafters until one of these threads pops up and then you swoop down as Merkel's propaganda minister.

So, really, that's the only reason you're in this forum, isn't it? To counter anything we say about Europe turning into absolute shit.

OK, I'm ready for your long-winded, smirking response. And oh, yes, please do include some of that "well, this is just the internet and this is just a web forum so it means nothing" shit, all the while you're typing VERY long posts, explaining why none of what you're taking the time to post here matters.

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:

I doubt my EDC will be very useful in that scenario.

EDC isn't the solution to all problems and it wouldn't have saved the people in the twin towers either. Doesn't mean it couldn't come in handy if the truck is disabled and the driver starts shooting.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
Banshee, every time there's an attack in Europe, I expect you to come in to this forum and downplay it or deny it altogether. You could have ten guys named Muhammed Achmed Muhammed kill 50 Europeans by shooting them to death, all the while shouting "Allu Akbar, we are terrorists!!", and you would come in here and try to tell us that we are all overreacting if we call it terrorism.

That's clearly nonsense. The forum history doesn't go back very far, but when the first Islamist attack happened in Germany back in 2011 and some Kosovarian shot up a bus of US airmen at Frankfurt airport because he had been incensed by a Youtube clip from Brian de Palma's "Redacted" pretending to be actual video of real American soldiers raping a good Muslim girl, I posted about that. Ditto the Afghan who axed several people in and outside a regional train near Würzburg, and the Syrian blowing himself up in Ansbach in 2016 (in fact I remember posting the words "now we're having real fun", because it was the first Islamist suicide bombing here, even if the suicide part was probably unintentional). Ditto the Berlin Christmas market truck attack the same year; people just didn't like me pointing out how the guy had travelled around Europe's open borders for years before the refugee crisis, and that the German borders had in fact never been closed since 1995.

I haven't started threads in a long time because I'm not really too active here and mostly react to other peoples' post about stuff I know, but I could also talk about the failed attempt by an Islamist group to bomb two German trains in Cologne in 2006, similar to the London and Madrid attacks; the "Sauerland group", including several German converts to Islam, who were arrested in 2007 for planning to bomb US installations in Germany; the 2012 attempt by another group including converts to bomb Bonn Central Station; the 2016 bombing of a Sikh temple in Essen by two Islamist youth; the rather amateurish attempt by a German-Iraqi twelve-year-old to bomb the Ludwigshafen Christmas market, and the 15-year-old German-Moroccan girl stabbing a federal cop in Hannover, also 2016; and last year's Hamburg stabbing spree by a Palestinian who was at least in equal parts deranged and extremist, as well as the thoroughly botched arrest of a Syrian who planned to bomb Berlin airport, was eventually turned in to police by some compatriots, and on top of it all hung himself while in remand. Plus a host of false alarms and arrests which turned out to be based on insufficient evidence. Only yesterday Berlin police detained six in the wake of the Münster incident on the vague suspicion that they might plan to attack the half-marathon run in the city, but had to release them today.

Most of that stuff is probably not spectacular enough to get noticed here, and I've been off the board for weeks and months at a time, too. But people also go all nuts about Muslim terrorism where there is none - including the Germanwings co-pilot who crashed that Airbus into the Alps; the Syrian who snapped over relationship issues and killed his Polish girlfriend before attacking whoever else got in his way; the German-Iranian Munich spree shooter who ironically had it in for Turks and Arabs because he had been bullied in school by them, legally changed his first name from Ali to David shortly after turning 18, and may have converted to Christianity; and the completely German guy on a drug-induced psychosis who stabbed several at a station near the same city because, even more ironically, he had convinced himself of the bullshit that Germany was being taken over by Muslims, and that he had to pass himself off as one of theirs to survive. Plus, obviously, the current case in Münster. Again, if people find my information useful, my pleasure. If they want to know other stuff, fine. If not, no problem either.

^^More paragraphs in this place that doesn't matter. At least you're predictable.

Say "hey" to Angela for us, would you?

quote:

Originally posted by BansheeOne:

If not terrorism, why do all your cops hide beneath those things like it is?

quote:

Originally posted by StayFrosty:

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:

I doubt my EDC will be very useful in that scenario.

EDC isn't the solution to all problems and it wouldn't have saved the people in the twin towers either. Doesn't mean it couldn't come in handy if the truck is disabled and the driver starts shooting.

Well obviously.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
If not terrorism, why do all your cops hide beneath those things like it is?

Been like that for a long time. Plain criminals also like to try exacting retribution against elite cops who arrest them, as do bad actors unconnected to current cases being covered in the media. The only uncovered face pictures I can find are from GSG 9 in the late 70s when they were brand new. By the 80s, everybody had masked up.

Also, the incident initially was treated as a terrorist event, national alert and all. Hence the Berlin arrests the same day.

Impossible. There is no terrorism in Europe. It's a beautiful place. Blue skies and daffodils.

Looks like the German police in those pictures carry Sigs. 226? I thought the German police and military went Glock.