By morning, the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office (LKA) had taken over the high-profile case. Police have not ruled out that the target was specifically a weapons manufacturer, and are investigating the attack as potentially politically motivated.
What happened on Mühldorfstraße
Just before midnight, the Munich police duty desk received a call from a bystander, who reported that so-called Molotov cocktails had been thrown from a passing car at the construction site by the office complex. One ignited immediately. Patrol units arrived on the scene very quickly and managed to extinguish the fire before it could spread into a serious blaze. Thanks to the swift, timely response of law enforcement, the office building sustained no significant damage.
A second bottle failed to ignite. It was disposed of not by patrol officers but by specialists from the Bavarian LKA’s technical special unit (TSG) – the unit typically called in to defuse explosive devices.
While the fire was being put out, police simultaneously began combing the area for the attackers. The search led patrols to a petrol station on Innsbrucker Ring, where a 28-year-old woman and a 38-year-old man, both Bulgarian nationals, were detained. The extent of their involvement in the incident has not yet been established.
Update: On September 4, prosecutors requested an arrest warrant for the suspects, and they have since been taken into custody.
An office complex housing several defence firms – and echoes of 2021
As it later emerged, the office building on Mühldorfstraße is shared by several companies with ties to the defence industry, so the question of exactly who the attack was aimed at remains open for now. Investigators are hoping the suspects will themselves disclose their motives and any possible instigator behind the crime. The suspects’ nationality has fuelled suspicion of a Russian connection.
The LKA has declined to clarify this, citing the confidentiality of the investigation and national security concerns. In response to an inquiry from Bavarian public broadcaster BR, authorities also declined to name the company that was allegedly the target. According to media reports, the construction site is located in front of the headquarters of the Munich-based technology firm Rohde & Schwarz – one of Germany’s largest manufacturers of radio-electronic and defence equipment – though this connection has not been officially confirmed. In a follow-up piece, BR then saw fit to publish a full list of Munich’s defence companies along with their physical addresses, which understandably sparked public outrage.
Commenters on the BR24 website have spent a full day up in arms, sarcastically suggesting that the former staff of our beloved food-blogger-turned Bavarian Minister-President should go ahead and add GPS coordinates for these companies’ key sites and send the list straight to the Kremlin. In the fifth year of a hybrid world war, our publicly subsidised journalists – who receive millions in state funding – are openly publishing strategically sensitive information, apparently for the clicks.
In what other country would that be possible? Only in a country where the authorities listen to a handful of local activists, often uneducated and not gainfully employed, rather than to actual experts in the field.
Police noted that, if the assumption about the target proves correct, this would not be the first incident of its kind in the area. In 2021, unknown perpetrators set fire to a power cable laid openly in a construction pit near the Rohde & Schwarz headquarters, cutting power to roughly 20,000 households in eastern Munich. A letter later surfaced online in which its authors described the arson as a strike against the so-called “arms concern.” Those criminal cases were never solved.
Prosecutors suspect a political motive
Given the suspicion of a political motive, the investigation was swiftly handed over to the LKA and the Munich General Prosecutor’s Office, with Bavaria’s Center for Combating Extremism and Terrorism also brought in for additional inquiries. So far, only the working theory behind the investigation has been disclosed.
Open questions
The central question – whether the two detainees actually had anything to do with the firebombing – has yet to be determined by police.
Beyond that, several questions remain unanswered:
- exactly how many incendiary bottles the attackers used;
- how and where they were made;
- whether the arsonists acted alone or with accomplices;
- and whether there was someone behind the attack who ordered it?
Why it matters
Formally, the damage from the night-time attack on the defence facility was minimal, thanks to police who managed to put out the fire before the building suffered any noticeable harm. But the mere fact of an attack on a defence complex – one with a suspected political motive – is reason enough for legitimate concern, especially against the backdrop of Russia’s ongoing hybrid attacks on European countries. And the unsolved, similar 2021 case in the same district suggests this may not be an isolated act of sabotage but part of a recurring pattern of attacks on Munich’s defence sector.
Only a thorough investigation by the LKA and prosecutors can clarify that. For now, all we can do is wait patiently for our authorities to act. But given past track records in similar situations – beyond populist statements and slogans – we’re unlikely to get much in the way of concrete answers. It seems more important, apparently, to keep doing daily interviews about the taste of white sausage on one’s blog…
Source: dpa
