As Suspect Arrested in Bombing, German Soccer Team Plays on

Dortmund lost hastily rescheduled game 3-2
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Apr 13, 2017 12:11 AM CDT
Islamic Extremist Arrested After Attack on Soccer Team
A damaged window on Dortmund's team bus.   (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

German authorities arrested a suspected Islamic extremist Wednesday in their investigation into a bomb attack on a top German soccer team, while the team—missing a defender wounded in the blast—lost 3-2 to Monaco in a hastily rescheduled Champions League match. Amid heightened security, the defeat for Borussia Dortmund in Europe's top club competition came less than 24 hours after three explosions shattered a window of the team's bus and rattled nerves across the gritty city in western Germany, the AP reports. Dortmund coach Thomas Tuchel said after the loss that he felt European soccer's governing body, UEFA, had not taken the attack seriously enough as it swiftly rescheduled the match.

"Basically, we had the feeling that we were being treated as if a beer can had hit our bus," Tuchel said. Earlier in the day, Frauke Koehler, a spokeswoman for German federal prosecutors, said investigators are focusing on two suspected Islamic extremists in the bus attack and searched their homes, arresting one of them. But authorities said other motives are possible. Investigators found three copies of a note at the scene of the blasts, which demanded the withdrawal of German Tornado reconnaissance jets that are assisting the fight against the ISIS and the closure of the US Ramstein Air Base in Germany, Koehler said. But the region's top security official raised the possibility the note could be "an attempt to lay a false trail." (More Germany stories.)

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