Tours · Düsseldorf · terror_hoax
The Plot That Never Was - Heinrich-Heine-Allee
In February 2016, this grand boulevard was named as the target of a horrific ISIS double-bombing plot. But when the case reached the court two years later, the chilling intelligence turned out to be a complete fabrication.
Sobre este lugar
The Deutsche Oper am Rhein anchors this wide, tree-lined avenue connecting the Altstadt to the glittering Königsallee. In February 2016, a young Syrian man walked into a police station in Paris and described a ready-to-act ISIS cell with orders to strike here: two suicide bombers detonating on this busy street, followed by armed gunmen sweeping through the crowd. German security services scrambled, three men were arrested across two German states, and European capitals held their breath. Yet when the case came before the OLG Düsseldorf in 2018, the story collapsed. The court found that the man had invented the entire plot to gain immigration advantages as an informant. He was convicted of other serious terrorism offences but fully acquitted of the Düsseldorf attack that was never real. The avenue carries an older shadow too: in September 1923, when this street was still called the Hindenburgwall, a separatist rally spiralled into a deadly shoot-out with police on this very ground, an episode known as Düsseldorfer Blutsonntag.
Datos clave
- 7 years — The sentence handed down on 13 June 2018 for membership in two terror organisations and for killing a soldier in Syria, though the informant was fully acquitted of the fabricated Düsseldorf plot.
- 3 arrests — Officers arrested three Syrians in coordinated raids across NRW, Brandenburg and Baden-Württemberg on 2 June 2016, acting on the informant's claimed cell descriptions.
- 1923 year — On 30 September 1923, Düsseldorfer Blutsonntag left many dead on this avenue, then known as the Hindenburgwall, when a mass separatist rally turned to gunfire.