BERLIN, Aug. 20 (Xinhua) -- German police forces have conducted raids against an illegal online platform for explosives, the police office in the German city of Goettingen announced on Tuesday.
Around 1,000 police officers were involved in the raids which were carried at 34 different locations throughout Germany as well as in Lithuania and Croatia, according to the German police.
"By bundling our expertise and police forces, we were able to demonstrate clearly that the Internet is by no means a legal vacuum," said Uwe Luehrig, president of the police in Goettingen.
According to the police, the approximately 3,000 members of the internet platform called xplosives.net gave each other tips in chats and via photos and videos on how to make drugs or build weapons such as pipe bombs or mines.
However, the investigators did not assume a political motive behind the members of the closed internet platform.
Servers as well as weapons and substances that could be used either to produce synthetic drugs or explosives were found during the raids, according to Luehrig.
Police officers would have seized enough material to build a 30-kg bomb, noted Luehrig, adding that this "would have been a monster bomb".
The operators of the explosives platform are now being investigated for violations of the German War Weapons Control Act, the gun control act, explosives control act as well as the narcotics act.
