After the fire of an electricity pylon that cut off the power supply to the Tesla factory and parts of the community of Grünheide in Brandenburg, there is a letter of responsibility.
The left-wing extremist “Vulkangruppe” claims to be the perpetrator in a letter that has been submitted to the rbb and the police. It is currently being checked for authenticity.
The “Vulkan Group” has claimed responsibility for the “attack on the power supply” near the Tesla factory near Berlin as a protest against the US car manufacturer. “We sabotaged Tesla today,” the group said in a letter on Tuesday. The Brandenburg police are currently assuming arson, and the State Security Office of the State Criminal Police Office has started the investigation. The power outage caused a production stop at Tesla, and numerous households in the region were also affected.
The “volcano groups” were suspected to be responsible for several arson attacks in the Berlin-Brandenburg area in the past. Tesla himself was probably already a target of the group. In March 2021, a fire broke out 500 meters from the factory construction site, in which a small area of forest measuring around three square meters went up in flames. Cables that supplied the construction site with electricity were also damaged.
“Volcano” attacks of the past
“Volcano groups” had previously destroyed a power cable in Berlin-Charlottenburg in 2018 to hit a technology company; in 2020, members carried out an arson attack on a cable shaft in Berlin to hit the developers of a Corona app.
When asked, authorities initially did not want to confirm a possible connection with protests around the Tesla factory site. Since last week, around 80 to 100 environmental activists have been occupying part of the state forest in Brandenburg near the Tesla factory, which Elon Musk’s company wants to clear if its site is expanded.
Forest squatters have nothing to do with it
The activists from the forest group “Prevent Tesla” had just commented on the attack on the electricity pylon: “Our form of resistance is an occupation of water. We are opposing the expansion of the factory with our bodies and tree houses. We are not endangering any lives,” said the activists Group t-online. In the fight for water security and climate justice, they opposed destructive mechanisms and committed themselves to a society that enables a good life for everyone. That’s why this is not their action: “The water occupation stands in solidarity with the workers at Tesla and the residents. We regret that many people in the region were and are affected by the power outage.”