Some don’t appreciate anonymous attacks on power, to say the least. On one side are the narrow-minded of the revolutionary movement, who see nothing but “recuperation” when comrades highlight and defend acts that speak to them. At the opposite end of the spectrum, for example, are the Munich cops, who in 2023 had to set up a special investigation group called “Raute”, under the State Protection Service (Staatsschutz), to try and solve some 30 arson attacks that left no textual clues. These included sabotage of communications, energy, logistics and war infrastructures*, two of which were the subject of raids by German police on comrades in Brussels and Amsterdam last May
After a few months’ respite, the lackeys of Bavaria’s good order were hoping to finally bask in the summer sun, if not for the return of the ghosts that haunt their sleepless nights. In Oberhaching, a small village to the south of Munich, a 200-meter-long ballast cleaner machine was parked to replace the track ballast between the S-Bahn (suburban railway) stations of Deisenhofen and Solln. A fine civilizational undertaking that was ruined at around 4am on Wednesday July 31, when several incendiary devices were judiciously placed to devour it in flames. The damage caused by the sabotage is estimated at around 500,000 euros, or “a six-figure sum in the middle of the range”, as they say in the bureaucratic language of uniforms. Not least because the expensive steel snake consisting of two excavation chains and three screen systems is now out of action, and part of it had to be dismantled on site.
In addition to the fire department, which had been alerted by a brave citizen, large numbers of Munich and federal police – the latter with a helicopter to track down the perpetrators in vain – were dispatched to the scene of the attack. The fire department also searched the entire machine with thermal imaging cameras, looking for other parts on fire, and the machinery had been burning for a long time was then analyzed by the “Raute” investigation group, which of course was also on the scene.
They immediately ruled out a technical fault, while Deutsche Bahn (DB, Germany’s national railway company) declined to comment, hiding behind ongoing investigations, especially as “politically-motivated arson” looms large. The “Raute” investigators consulted their papers and remembered that a similar attack had already taken place last autumn, alongside the sabotage of fiber optics, cell towers, construction machinery, gravel extraction plants and geothermal pipelines in the region. On October 28, 2023, a rail construction machine equipped with a railway crane was set on fire at Unterföhring, this time in the northern suburbs of Munich.
As for the mysterious motivations and perspectives of the ghosts, perhaps it’s worth mirroring the words of a manager of this equipment (from the company GTU Mobility), who pled not to attack him: “This is much more than just an attack on a construction site: it’s an attack on our common future. Rail is the backbone of our economy and our daily lives”…
[Summary of Bavarian regional newspapers (OVB & Merkur), September 2, 2024]
* Note of Sans Nom: A detailed overview of these 30 sabotages can be found in the article “Ghosts continue to haunt the night”.
