German football team coach bus hit by roadside bombs
By
Dietmar Henning
15 April 2017
Four days after the bomb attack Tuesday on the bus of the Borussia Dortmund (BVB) football club there is still no clear information regarding either the identity of the attacker(s) or motive.
On Tuesday evening at 7:15 p.m. three bombs loaded with steel pins exploded as the bus set off from the team’s hotel to the local stadium in Dortmund. The bombs were hidden behind a hedge and detonated by remote control. They had a destructive power of up to a hundred yards.
BVB was due to play AS Monaco in a Champions League quarter-final when the bombs struck.
Despite its reinforced panels the bus was badly damaged. The Spanish BVB defender Marc Bartra suffered an injury to his wrist and was operated on the same evening. One metal splinter only just missed the BVB players and drilled into the headrest of a seat. “We are lucky nothing worse happened,” Frauke Köhler, spokeswoman for the prosecutor generals’ office declared.
Only one day after the attack she declared that the attack had a “terrorist background” and that the federal prosecutor’s office had taken over the investigation. Germany’s highest state investigation authority is responsible for terrorist offences.
Investigators from the Federal Prosecutor’s Office and the Federal Criminal Police Office arrested two men from North Rhine-Westphalia on Wednesday night. Special Forces stormed the apartments of a 25-year-old Iraqi in Wuppertal and a German living in the small neighbouring village of Unna. Both have Islamic backgrounds.
One man was arrested, but on Thursday it was announced that the investigations “had so far no evidence that the accused had been involved in the attack”. The second suspect was not even…