translated from German from chronik, 3 November 2021
(Süddeutsche Zeitung, 3 November 2021). Early Wednesday morning, a fire in a gravel pit in Oberhaching, a suburb of Munich (Bavaria), caused more than one million euros worth of damage. After arriving on the scene shortly after 5am, it took the fire brigade about an hour to extinguish the burning machinery and construction equipment. Due to the suspicion of arson, the criminal police are in charge of the investigation. Officials from Police Station 13, which is responsible for arson cases, have carried out extensive trace and evidence searches. In addition, possible links with other cases are being examined. For this purpose, police station 43, which deals with politically motivated crimes from the extreme left-wing movement, was called in.
In August, there had already been an as yet unsolved arson attack on a gravel pit in Planegg [also in the Munich district] with millions in damage. At that time, a 350-metre-long section of a conveyor belt was destroyed near the Kasten forest estate.
It was here that climate activists had set up a protest camp in the summer and occupied trees, demonstrating against the anticipated felling of the forest to develop another gravel pit.
Similarly, when an arson attack east of Munich paralysed the city’s electricity supply in May, the plans to cut down the Kasten Forest were explicitly cited as the reason for the action in a communique.
As far as we know, the company affected this time is in any case not active in this region. The police are looking for witnesses who may have noticed suspicious people or vehicles in Oberhaching on Wednesday morning in the vicinity of Lanzenhaarer and Münchnerstrasse …
(Abendzeitung, 4 November 2021). On Thursday, following a fire at a gravel pit in Oberhaching, police officers distributed calls for witnesses in the area. In addition, they were deployed to ask questions to the inhabitants. They wanted to know if anyone in the vicinity of Lanzenhaarer Street had noticed anything suspicious lately.
The police are looking for people who have come from elsewhere and behaved in an unusual way, unknown cars and are even asking about cyclists. There are no significant leads so far – State Security is investigating.
According to a police spokesman, since the fire some clues have been provided by the population, “Each of them is examined, everything is checked”.
On Wednesday, at around 5am, the alarm went off at the company’s site east of Oberhaching. Parts of the gravel pit buildings, a conveyor belt and several construction machines were in flames. The police believe that it was an arson attack. The damage is estimated to be around one million euros.
Investigators are looking into whether there is a link to similar cases. In August an arson attack was carried out on the gravel pit in the Kasten forest. At that time the perpetrator(s) also set fire to a conveyor belt. The damage amounted to almost one million euros.
As a result of an arson attack on power cables in a trench near the East Station, thousands of Munich residents were also left without power for several hours last May.
