German authorities are conducting an intensive manhunt for a 48-year-old climate activist, identified as Daniel V., who has claimed responsibility for a series of sabotage attacks against electricity infrastructure across three German states. The suspect sent handwritten letters — including one to the German daily taz — to media outlets and police, signing them with his name and home address, and declaring that "electricity generation from fossil fuels is a crime that causes indescribable suffering." Forensic experts have assessed the letters as authentic.
The attacks targeted electrical substations and high-voltage installations in North Rhine-Westphalia, Brandenburg, and Saxony — the three German states where lignite, or brown coal, is still actively mined and burned for power generation. In the first incident on Tuesday, more than twenty homemade rockets were fired at high-voltage lines near the Jänschwalde power plant in southern Brandenburg, causing two short circuits, though no blackout occurred. Later that evening, an attack on a substation in Bergheim, near Cologne, caused five coal-fired power units at nearby plants to shut down, with one not expected to return to service until the following week. Further suspected launch devices were found at sites in Dormagen, Weisweiler, and Hamm, while police in Saxony secured twelve improvised explosive devices at two locations near Bautzen.
On Friday, a heavily armed special operations unit raided a converted truck camper belonging to Daniel V. in the Hambach Forest — a woodland in North Rhine-Westphalia that has become a symbol of anti-coal activism in Germany — but found no trace of the man himself. Police believe he fled on foot into the surrounding woodland. A search of his home in Gevelsberg, an industrial town in North Rhine-Westphalia, had already uncovered explosives. Thermal-imaging helicopters and wildlife camera data were deployed in the search, and authorities released two photographs of the suspect, appealing to the public for information.
In his letters, Daniel V. stated that he "had to act" because neither the media nor the state were doing so, and also linked his campaign to opposition to Germany's arms industry, which he accused of supporting "genocide in Palestine." Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt described the case as likely "climate terrorism" carried out by a lone actor, while North Rhine-Westphalia's interior minister, Herbert Reul, warned that anyone endangering the electricity supply to hospitals in the name of climate protection "saves nothing — they endanger lives."
The incident has reignited debate about the vulnerability of Germany's critical infrastructure. The head of grid operator Amprion, Christoph Müller, called on policymakers to ease mandatory public disclosure rules for power network data, arguing they make "it unnecessarily easy for attackers." He also urged that companies be permitted to monitor not just their own premises but the surrounding areas using drones and cameras. Germany's energy supply has been targeted before: in September last year, tens of thousands of households lost power after arson attacks on two high-voltage pylons claimed by an anarchist group, and earlier this year a far-left group called Vulkangruppe claimed responsibility for an attack that left parts of Berlin without electricity for several days.