German army officer posed for months as a Syrian refugee and planned an attack, prosecutors say

Reporting from Berlin —  A German army officer posed for months as a Syrian with the aim of carrying out a violent attack he hoped would be blamed on refugees, prosecutors said after the 28-year-old’s arrest on Thursday.

The first lieutentant — identified in German media reports only as “Franco A.” — had managed to fulfill all his military duties while posing as a refugee for more than a year, authorities said.

“The man was evidently leading a dual life,” Nadja Niesen of the state prosecutors office in Frankfurt told reporters.

She said he had appeared one day in December 2015 at a refugee center in the Bavarian town of Zirndorf claiming to be a Christian and the son of a fruit merchant in Damascus.

He spoke no Arabic, only French, and told local officials that after fleeing Syria he had applied for asylum and was receiving $450 a month in state benefits. He was also given a room in a refugee shelter where he spent time on weekends and while on military leave.

“I’ve never heard of anything like this before,” Niesen said. “It’s an extraordinary story. He was only sporadically at the refugee center and no one seemed to notice anything unusual about him.”

The soldier had been stationed with an elite army unit based just across Germany’s western border in Illkirch, France.

On Feb. 3, he was briefly detained after he tried to pick up a gun that authorities had found hidden in a bathroom at the Vienna airport and left there as a trap, according to Der Spiegel magazine. He told police that he had found the gun in the bushes near the airport a few weeks earlier and stashed it in the bathroom to retrieve later.

Authorities let him go but began closely tracking him.

Investigators discovered that his fingerprints matched those of the person who registered as a refugee in Zirndorf in December 2015. Through surveillance of his telephone, they learned he harbored racist views that he managed to conceal from the army.

A 24-year-old student from the nearby town of Offenbach who authorities believe was an accomplice to the solider was also arrested on Thursday

“We have learned from various communications that the two shared racist beliefs,” Niesen said. “That was clear from their conversations.”

In late 2015, more than a million refugees fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East streamed into Germany after Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the borders.

Most Germans welcomed the refugees, but that changed in early 2016 after large numbers of women were sexually abused during New Year’s Eve celebrations in Cologne. The abuse was widely blamed on the refugees even though most of the suspects were from north Africa.

Unease over refugees has helped a far-right party, the Alternative for Germany, win a series of regional elections. The party is projected to win 10% of the vote in the federal election Sept. 24, making it more difficult for Merkel to win a fourth term.