Police are investigating suspected sabotage after persons unknown attempted to access the water treatment plant at a German NATO airbase in Cologne, the third time such a thing has happened in recent months.
A fence was torn down at the Luftwaffe base attached to Cologne Airport, with an alleged intruder attempting to gain access to the water treatment plant room and a radio tower. A metal barrier was forced to gain access to climb the radio mast, apparently unsuccessfully. The attempt to gain access to the water plant was also foiled by the strength of the door, it is stated.
Investigators with the state security service believe they are looking at an attempt at sabotaging the NATO airbase. The attempt to force entry was discovered on January 2nd, says Germany’s Spiegel, but has only been made public now.
The attempt to access the water treatment plant is not only conspicuous because of the potential harm to health of the military personnel on base if the supply was spiked, but because this appears to be the third time alleged saboteurs have tried to get into it. The fence was cut and “abnormal values” were detected in a test on the base’s drinking water in August, and the fence was again tried in November.
The chairman of the German Parliament’s Defence Committee said at the time that “a hostile actor wants to demonstrate its sabotage capabilities here” and said the obvious culprit was Russia. As reported in August:
The Cologne airbase of the German military is adjacent to the civilian Cologne airport and employees around five-and-a-half thousand people, military and civilian. A spokesman said: “As the drinking water system was showing unusual values, the drinking water supply in the barracks was cut off”, a memo was circulated ordering staff at the base not to drink the tap water in any circumstance.
The base was searched and no intruder was found, but a man-sized hole was discovered in the fence surrounding the base’s drinking water plant on Wednesday morning. Counter-intelligence and political crime police are assisting in the investigation.
Europe is particularly sensitive to alleged Russian sabotage presently, given the ongoing state of ‘hybrid warfare’ said to be going on between the Russian Federation and NATO. As reported, there have been dozens of instances of events chalked up to Russian interference in recent years.
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