BERLIN: German police said Sunday they have arrested a man accused of having ties to a suspected extremist captured in Austria and thought to have been plotting an attack. A spokesman for the police said the man was taken into custody on Saturday in the western city of Neuss on a warrant for “planning a serious crime targeting the state”. He declined to provide further details. German news magazine Focus had reported earlier, citing judicial sources, that the elite SEK command force had stormed the man’s flat on the suspicion he was planning a bombing targeting police and soldiers. Focus said the man and the teenage suspect arrested late Friday in Vienna, an Austrian citizen from the Albanian minority, were believed to have “experimented with material to build explosives” in the flat in Neuss. German police confiscated computers and mobile phones from the home, and the suspect’s wife was temporarily detained for questioning, according to the report. Focus said the man arrested in Austria had told investigators that he had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) group and revealed the link to the accomplice in Neuss.