German special police units have arrested a Turkish citizen in Reutlingen district on suspicion of ordering the 23 September arson attack on a Starlink ground station in Poland, the Stuttgart Prosecutor General's Office and Baden-Württemberg's State Criminal Police Office announced on 3 November. Investigators say he hired the two men who allegedly set the fire, acting from Germany. A trail in the case leads to a Turkish crime gang whose members may have worked for Russian intelligence, Der Spiegel reported.

Starlink keeps Ukraine's drone units and front-line troops connected, and Poland has supplied 29,500 of the terminals they use. Until now, arrests in Europe's run of attacks on Starlink sites had reached only people suspected of carrying them out. This is the first suspect held as the one who ordered an attack, and Germany has opened its own terrorism case instead of only executing Poland's warrants. That may bring investigators a step closer to whoever paid for the fire.

Prosecutors say he gave the orders from Germany

According to the investigators, the man commissioned the two Turkish citizens detained in October to carry out the attack. He also allegedly arranged for another suspect to drive them to Poland on the night of 23 September. Police seized eight mobile phones and ammunition from him. A Stuttgart court ordered him held on strong suspicion of preparing a terrorist offense. Prosecutors gave no further details, citing the ongoing investigation.

The two alleged arsonists, aged 38 and 34, were detained in Nürtingen on 12 October under European arrest warrants issued by Poland, and their extradition proceedings are still under way. Warsaw blamed Russian intelligence for the fire. Tomasz Siemoniak, the minister coordinating Poland's special services, said those services increasingly turn to people tied to the criminal world.

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A Turkish gang whose leader Russia never handed over

In October, Der Spiegel first reported, citing independent sources in several countries, that the trail leads to the Daltons, a Turkish organized crime group also active in Germany. Gang members may have carried out the sabotage on behalf of Russian intelligence, the magazine wrote. The gang's alleged leader, Beratcan Gökdemir, was arrested in Russia in 2024, but Moscow never extradited him to Türkiye. German security sources told Der Spiegel that Russia even protected him, and it is unclear whether he is still there.

Germany's Interior Ministry warned in May that working with organized crime suits Russian services especially for “sabotage or killing operations,” Der Spiegel reported. Until now, Russia has mostly relied on petty criminals paid small sums, who know little about who is behind a job. On 27 October, Turkish police detained 85 suspected Daltons members, 30 of them minors, in 30 provinces. They said the gang recruited people through social media and directed them in a messaging group, and did not mention Starlink.

Three Starlink sites attacked in under a month

The fire in Wola Krobowska, south of Warsaw, was the first of three attacks on Starlink sites in Europe. In October, intruders burned antennas at a satellite ground station near Sofia, and a German court has ordered two 19-year-old Germans held pending extradition to Bulgaria. Sofia says the same pair struck another EU country on 18 October, the night guards foiled an attempt to burn Starlink antennas at a Lithuanian company. The Bulgarian and Lithuanian attacks are not part of the German arrest warrant, Der Spiegel noted.