Saudi Arabia to aid German investigators over attacks: report | News | DW.COM | 06.08.2016
The "Spiegel" report said new findings had shown that up until shortly before their crimes, both attackers had been in close contact via a chat conversation with possible supporters of the jihadist group "Islamic State" (IS) in Saudi Arabia.
Traces of the chats indicated that both men had been not only been influenced by the unknown IS backers, but had even received instructions on how to proceed, the report said.
According to "Spiegel," one of the attackers, a 17-year-old thought to be from Pakistan or Afghanistan, had initially been told to drive a car into a crowd. The attacker rejected the idea on the grounds that he didn't have a driver's license. Instead, he employed an ax to
assault passengers on a train near the southern city of Würzburg on July 18, seriously wounding five people before being shot dead by police.
The report said investigators had concluded that the other attacker, who died when the explosives he was carrying in a backpack detonated, was meant to set them off by remote control in a crowd at a music festival in the town of Ansbach, also in the southern state of Bavaria.
Shortly before
the July 24 attack took place, his chat contact had called on him to film the explosion and the resulting fire and send the film to IS, "Spiegel" said. But the explosives detonated prematurely, killing the 27-year-old Syrian attacker and injuring 15 other people.
(how did a refugee waiting to be deported get hold of explosives?)
Spigel story at
Terror Investigation: Germany Attackers Had Contact with Suspected IS Members - SPIEGEL ONLINE