Berlin pistols suspect tied to bomb plot, source says

A suspect held in Romania after handguns were found near Berlin is one of two Ukrainian men arrested last October in a parcel-bomb plot case, a Romanian police source told AFP. Germany said the weapons were linked to planned attacks.

German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said on Friday that Romania was holding a suspected "low-level agent" after German intelligence services and police found two handguns and ammunition in a forest hideout near Berlin. He said German federal prosecutors were investigating the suspect for allegedly preparing attacks and suspected espionage.

Dobrindt said the involvement of a "foreign power" could not be ruled out, but he did not name a country or disclose the suspect's nationality. He called the case another "hybrid threat," a term Berlin uses for hostile acts short of open military attacks.

After a tipoff, German authorities found the weapons, made them inoperable and watched the site to see whether anyone would collect them, Dobrindt said. No one did. He said German authorities assume the weapons were intended for attack plans, but he gave no target.

The Romanian police source said the suspect was one of two Ukrainian men in their 20s arrested in October. Romanian police said at the time that the pair had come to Bucharest from Poland and handed two parcels containing homemade devices to an international courier company, intending to destroy the building by setting it on fire. The devices were defused.

The Romanian Intelligence Service said at the time that it had foiled a sabotage operation orchestrated by the Russian Federation on Romanian territory. It said the two Ukrainians were linked to a wider network of saboteurs targeting European countries and controlled by Russian secret services.

German public broadcasters NDR and WDR and the SZ newspaper had earlier reported that German security services found two handguns hidden in woods outside Berlin last year and believed they were intended for Russian agents assigned to carry out operations including assassinations.

Germany has accused Russia of recruiting "low-level" or "disposable" agents to carry out sabotage, espionage and attacks since Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Germany's domestic intelligence agency has warned that Russia could carry out attacks on defence industry executives, opposition figures in exile and supporters of Ukraine.