BERLIN: German customs officers arrested on Tuesday a 31-year-old German man suspected of selling a gun to a teenager who went on a shooting spree in Munich last month.
Officers from Germany’s Customs Investigation Bureau made the arrest in Marburg, a university town north of Frankfurt, after posing as buyers willing to purchase €8,000 ($9,024) worth of guns and cartridges from the alleged arms dealer, according to prosecutors in Frankfurt.
Communication with the man took place over an encrypted messaging service, according to prosecutor Alexander Badle.Germany’s tough privacy laws, which protect suspects in criminal investigations, prevent authorities from naming the man.
Germany has some of the strictest gun laws in the world, making the dark net—anonymous corners of the internet the place of choice for criminals to procure weapons. The Munich rampage, which left 10 dead including the shooter, has shocked a country unaccustomed to this level of violence.
Chat records and bus tickets found in the home of shooter Ali David Sonboly, an 18-year-old German-Iranian dual citizen, showed that he had met the man twice in Marburg, Bavarian officials said on Tuesday.
On a first visit on May 20, he bought the Glock 17 semiautomatic pistol used in the attack, and on a second trip on July 18, just days before the shooting, he returned to Marburg to buy 350 rounds of ammunition for the weapon, according to a joint statement from the Munich attorney general and Bavaria’s state criminal investigation office.
Investigators found the suspected dealer by following leads from investigating two other men in Germany who are suspected of buying guns from the same source.
A 62-year-old bookkeeper from North Rhine-Westphalia, a state near Marburg, is suspected of swapping pistols and ammunition of different calibers with the dealer at a meeting in June, according to Mr. Badle, the prosecutor in Frankfurt.
Separately, a 17-year-old student from Hesse, the state where Marburg is located, met the man in July to buy a repeating rifle along with 175 rounds for €1,150. At the home of the student’s parents, law enforcement found those items, along with three other rifles, four revolvers, a stockpile of rounds and five kilograms of gunpowder.
Both buyers communicated with the dealer over Bitmessage, an encrypted chat application. When the gun dealer was arrested Tuesday, he was carrying a loaded pistol in a shoulder strap. The prosecutor said Tuesday’s arrest showed authorities were able to monitor transactions in the dark net.
“The success of the investigation shows once again that there’s no such thing on the internet as full anonymity or complete protection from law enforcement,” Mr. Badle, the prosecutor, wrote in a message to reporters on Tuesday.
