Since 2011 German authorities have thwarted 13 terrorist attacks, including 6 cases where the information alerts were received from abroad

Without information from foreign partners, a number of planned terrorist attacks in Germany in recent years might not have been prevented. According to the Federal Government, a total of 13 attacks have been thwarted by the security authorities in Germany since 2011, three more failed for technical reasons.

“In six of these cases, information from foreign intelligence services and security authorities were of essential importance for prevention,” says a response by the Federal Government to a written question from CDU deputy Christoph de Vries.

The information received from abroad was either the trigger for investigations or made an “outstanding contribution”, writes the Federal Ministry of the Interior in the reply. For example, following the tip of a foreign intelligence service in June 2018, German authorities were able to arrest a couple in Köln-Chorweile, who was planning a bomb attack with the deadly poison ricin.