German police have detained a 48-year-old man suspected of carrying out a string of sabotage attacks on the high-voltage transmission network across three federal states, using homemade rockets to drape conductive wire over live lines and trigger short-circuits that knocked coal-fired generation units offline.
The arrest took place on Tuesday evening near the Weisweiler lignite-fired power station outside Aachen, ending a manhunt that had mobilised hundreds of officers, thermal-imaging drones and dog units across the Rhineland coalfield and the Hambach Forest, a former focus of climate activism.
Homemade rockets and confession letters
According to investigators, the suspect constructed launch platforms from which he fired self-made rockets carrying thin wire onto 380-kilovolt lines. At least two such attempts succeeded: one at the Jänschwalde plant in Brandenburg, where more than 20 rockets were recovered, and another at Bergheim near Cologne, where several RWE Power blocks were forced offline for days. The transmission operator 50Hertz confirmed two short-circuits leading to a block outage at Jänschwalde.
At the time of his arrest the man was carrying explosives. A tent concealed in undergrowth near Weisweiler was found rigged with further charges, which are now being examined by the North Rhine-Westphalia Landeskriminalamt. Three confession letters, which police regard as authentic, were recovered at different sites; one explicitly states that electricity generation from fossil fuels is a crime.
Attacks across three states
The sabotage campaign spanned North Rhine-Westphalia, Brandenburg and Saxony, the three states where lignite is still mined and burned. In eastern Saxony investigators uncovered 21 launch devices near substations, though most appear not to have functioned. The suspect is believed to have drawn attention to several sites himself through clues in the letters.
The first known attack occurred near Jänschwalde, which is why the Cottbus public prosecutor's office has taken over the overall investigation. Charges being prepared include causing an explosive explosion and disruption of public utilities.
Political response and the "climate terrorism" label
Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) described the series as "offensichtlich Klimaterrorismus eines Einzeltäters", evidently climate terrorism by a lone actor. The characterisation marks a sharpening of official language: previous grid attacks in Germany have been treated as sabotage or extremist crime, but the explicit anti-fossil-fuel motive in the letters has pushed the interior ministry to adopt the terrorism framing.
Brandenburg's police president Oliver Stepien called the arrest "ein wichtiger Schritt in den Ermittlungen" and emphasised that work continues to establish the full background and any possible connections.
Infrastructure vulnerability and operator impact
The episodes expose a low-tech but effective method of targeting the transmission backbone. A thin wire across a 380-kV line creates a phase-to-phase fault that triggers automatic protection systems, disconnecting the line and often the connected generation unit. While the grid withstood the incidents without cascading failure, the Bergheim outage lasted several days, underlining the physical insecurity of overhead lines that stretch for thousands of kilometres across the lignite regions.
RWE Power and 50Hertz have not quantified the financial loss, but the temporary loss of dispatchable coal capacity comes as Germany navigates a tight winter supply outlook following the phase-out of nuclear power and reduced Russian gas flows.
Investigation shifts to Cottbus prosecutor
With the suspect in custody, the focus moves to forensic analysis of the seized devices, the explosives found in the tent, and the digital trail of the confession letters. The Cottbus prosecutor will also examine whether the man acted entirely alone or had contact with extremist networks. No group has claimed responsibility, and the letters portray a solitary actor motivated by climate radicalisation.
People mentioned
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Oliver Stepien
Organisations
RWE Power · 50Hertz Transmission · Brandenburg Police · North Rhine-Westphalia Police · German Federal Ministry of the Interior · Cottbus Public Prosecutor's Office
