Photo Gallery Politicians Debate Need for Greater Video Surveillance
A video still of the person suspected of planting a bomb at the train station in downtown Bonn on Dec. 10. The nine seconds of film taken by a CCTV camera at a McDonald's in the station have helped police fill a gap in their knowlege of the course of events.
Last week's incident has triggered a debate in Germany over whether the country should introduce some of the widespread video surveillance that has been adopted in Great Britain. Extensive recorded video surveillance tapes enabled authorities there to identify the perpetrators in the July 2005 London bus and subway bombings within six days. In 2006, it took German authorities using video surveillance images taken at the Cologne train station three weeks to track down two would-be bombers.
Here, federal police can be seen investigating the train station after the discovery of the bomb in Bonn last Monday. Germany's federal police and national railway operator Deutsche Bahn are blaming each other for the fact that nothing was recorded at the part of the Bonn station where the bag holding the bomb was placed.
Here, officials with the State Office of Criminal Investigation in North Rhine-Westphalia search the contents of the duffle bag used to transport the bomb.
Officials said the bomb had actually been activated, but that it failed to detonate because of multiple design flaws.
German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich of the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) has said the bomb discovery in Bonn, together with the recent brutal killing of a young man on Alexanderplatz square in Berlin, "show that we need efficient video surveillance and video recording in public areas and train stations."
