German police arrest 28-year market speculator over Borussia Dortmund bus attack

German police have arrested a 28-year-old man suspected of carrying out the attack on the team bus of football team Borussia Dortmund last week which injured two people.

Prosecutors said the suspect had been speculating in the football club’s shares. There was no extremist background to the crime, they said. The man faces charges of causing an explosion and grievous bodily harm.

Police said that on the day of the attack, the suspect had bought 15,000 put options on shares in Borussia Dortmund, in a bet that the shares would fall. He used the IP address of L’Arrivée, the Dortmund hotel where the team was staying.

Minutes after the players left the hotel for a Champions League match with French side AS Monaco, their team bus was hit by three explosions.

The suspect apparently speculated that Borussia Dortmund’s shares would fall in the aftermath of the blast, particularly if it had resulted in deaths or injuries among the players. Shares closed the day 3 per cent down following the attack on April 12.

One of Dortmund’s players, Marc Bartra, suffered a fractured arm and shrapnel wounds, while a police motorcyclist who had been escorting the team bus to the stadium suffered a blast trauma.

The devices were packed with shards of metal, one of which embedded itself in the headrest of one of the seats in the bus.

The suspect, who German media reported has dual German and Russian citizenship, had moved into the hotel where the team was staying on April 9, taking a room on the top floor with a view of the spot where the explosion occurred.

Police had originally believed that Islamists might be behind the attack, particularly after the discovery of three letters claiming responsibility which used Islamist terminology and suggested a connection to the militant group Isis.