Sabotage
Power Grid
Berlin-Johannisthal pylon arson — suspected left-extremist sabotage
9 September 2025 · Pre-dawn hours
Johannisthal, Treptow-Köpenick, Berlin, Germany
Map
52.4350, 13.5300
What happened
Perpetrators wrapped steel chains around two 110kV high-voltage pylons in the Johannisthal area of Treptow-Köpenick and ignited accelerants, melting cable insulation and causing a short circuit. The resulting outage cut power to roughly 50,000 households and businesses across Treptow-Köpenick; several residents required hospital treatment. Power was not fully restored until 11 September, and at the time it was described as Berlin's longest blackout in at least 25 years — a record later surpassed by the January 2026 Lichterfelde attack. Investigators treated the case as politically motivated sabotage from the outset given the choice of target and method, and four suspects were later linked to both this attack and the January 2026 one during a coordinated March 2026 investigation, though prosecutors had not announced charges in the cited reporting.
When cited sources give different casualty, damage or spill figures for this event, they’re reported side by side above rather than merged into one number. See how confidence levels work.
- Evidence
- Documented
- Confidence
- High
- Infrastructure
- Power Grid
- Current temperature
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- Latitude
- 52.4350°
- Longitude
- 13.5300°
Attribution
Responsibility disputed Suspected left-wing extremists; no contemporaneous claim of responsibility
No group claimed the attack at the time. German prosecutors later linked the case to the same suspected perpetrator network investigated over the 3 January 2026 Lichterfelde attack, and searches targeting four suspects (aged 28–36) covered both cases in March 2026, but formal responsibility was not established in the cited reporting.