The Syrian baby so harmful that commandos have been despatched to arrest him: Heavily-armed squad sporting physique armour raid 16-year-old’s tackle in Germany
This is the moment a 16-year-old Syrian boy was deemed such an extreme danger that German authorities sent in heavily armed elite commandos to arrest him.
Officials launched a raid more commonly associated with terrorism suspects than a teenager living in a quiet residential block.
Dramatic footage shows how shortly before 6am today, an armoured special forces vehicle arrived outside an apartment block in Herne, North Rhine-Westphalia, with gun-wielding masked officers in body armour prepared to storm the building.
Within seconds, hydraulic machinery unfolded from the front of the truck, lifting a heavy-duty assault ramp directly up to a first-floor window in the swift, militarised operation.
The target was a 16-year-old Syrian national, wanted under an arrest warrant for an alleged serious robbery.
Shortly after officials entered, a male could be seen being escorted out of the apartment building wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and a jacket.
He was accompanied out by two police officers, a sharp contrast to the dozens of officers who barged into the property.
An official was also seen exiting and holding a box full of brown envelopes.
The boy seen being escorted out by officers. He was wanted for an alleged serious robbery
Dozens of masked officials were deployed to arrest a 16-year-old boy in a dawn raid in Germany
Police prepare to lock the ramp in place to arrest the boy, who is alleged to have been armed at the time of the robbery
Investigators ordered the deployment of Germany’s SEK special forces, units typically reserved for hostage situations and extreme threats, because the teenager was considered highly aggressive and violent.
Police sources said he was also armed at the time of the robbery, raising fears that any attempt to arrest him using conventional methods could end in bloodshed.
With the ramp locked into place, officers smashed their way into the flat, shouting commands as they secured rooms one by one before detaining the teenager.
At the same time, officers executed a search warrant at the boy’s family home, although police have not yet disclosed whether weapons or other evidence were recovered.
The dramatic arrest involved one of the most powerful tools in Germany’s domestic security arsenal, a specially converted Ford F-550 Super Duty truck, a US-built vehicle adapted for urban assault operations.
The vehicle’s defining feature is its Mobile Adjustable Ramp System, known as MARS, which allows officers to gain immediate access to upper floors of buildings, aircraft, ships or even trains.
Operated remotely, the hydraulic ramp can extend to heights of up to 13 metres, giving special forces the ability to breach properties from unexpected angles while minimising exposure to gunfire or ambush.
The overwhelming raid comes amid renewed scrutiny of crime statistics involving asylum seekers and non-German nationals, published by Germany’s federal criminal police office, the BKA, just days before the raid.
Police deployed a special vehicle used in very serious operations to arrest the teenager
Gun wielding commandos were seen on the street during the raid which happened at dawn
Once in the building, cops shouted orders and searched rooms in the apartment
According to the BKA’s data for 2024, there were 1.967 million known criminal suspects across the country.
Of those, 172,203 were classed as temporary migrants, a category that includes asylum seekers, individuals granted temporary protection, and people residing in Germany illegally.
That figure represents 8.8 per cent of all suspects, almost unchanged from the 8.9 per cent recorded the previous year.
The BKA estimates that around 3.06 million temporary migrants live in Germany, within a total population of approximately 83.6 million.
However, officials cautioned against drawing exact proportional conclusions, saying the temporary migrant figure was only the best available approximation and not precise enough for definitive percentage calculations.
Beyond that group, almost 697,000 suspects, roughly one-third of the total, were not German citizens.
This broader category includes people with long-term or permanent residency rights, who together make up around 15 per cent of Germany’s population.
German nationals accounted for the remaining 64.6 per cent of suspects.
