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>The main suspect in the long-running investigation that led to raids on Thursday is a 59-year-old Dutchman who authorities believe acquired the former military
by equalunique 7y ago
>The main suspect in the long-running investigation that led to raids on Thursday is a 59-year-old Dutchman who authorities believe acquired the former military bunker in Traben-Trarbach
I'm shocked because I've been given a tour of this datacenter by the man's sons, whose mother is friends with my grandmother, and whom I have known since a very young age. Like, the mother, the sons, my mother, my grandmother, and me, all toured a 6-levels deep NATO bunker & the surrounding buildings. It was an amazing sight to see. They did not talk much about what they were doing there, only that it was meant to be a secure datacenter. Their mom was just so happy that the father and sons were finally working together on something lucrative, and that they had a place to live (the bunker & surrounding buildings had a lot of facilities).
By the time of the tour, which was 2015, I hadn't seen them for several years. Catching up, I told them that I had a career a US federal gov contractor working in cyber security - to them, and I didn't realize it at the time, this was probably a red flag. I wanted to talk a lot about cyber sec stuff, but they seemed oddly quiet. Shortly after the visit, they went out of touch with my family. The final connection we had was one Facebook account belonging to the youngest kid - probably the 20yo one mentioned in the article. It seemed odd to me that he didn't use his real name, but now I understand why. It's been deleted.
These kids had an interesting backstory. Their mother was a black woman from the Dutch colony Curaçao. She met the father sometime during or before the 90s. Their children were mixed race, and were never accepted by their grandparents, who allegedly were Nazi-affiliated. The prospect of marriage fell apart, and this single mother had to raise the two sons on her own. Living in Westervoort nearby Arnhem, she met and struck up a close friendship with my grandmother, who became kind of a surrogate grandmother for those kids.
That NATO bunker is built upon a spot where Nazis would have used it during WWII. I thought it was an amazing turn of the tables for a black woman who was scorned by Nazis to now have a claim to it.
I had pictures of the inside of that NATO bunker, which was amazing to see, but the iPhone they were stored on got stolen later that year. I wish I had them. If I'm lucky, some combing through DropBox might uncover a few.
- theonlyklas 7y ago>the iPhone they were stored on got stolen later thatbyear. I wonder if that's correlated to the fact that you took pictures inside that bunker ;)
- equalunique 7y agoI doubt it. The phone was stolen in the US. Actually, it was stolen inside of one of the nicest gov buildings in Washington DC, which itself is really a shame. Most likley by the janitors, unfortunatley.
- theonlyklas 7y agoHonestly, the fact it was stolen inside a government building in Washington, DC makes me even more suspicious. You had some sort of evidence on that phone that someone else did not want to see.
- equalunique 7y agoThat would make for an interesting story for sure. The reality isn't so glamorous. The phone was stolen because I left it inside of a restroom stall. The particular restroom was one that's very secluded. Most people there didn't know about it, to the extent that, the only people I saw there with any regualrity were the janitors whose job was to routinely clean the place. Not sure what else to say besides that what you're suggesting is extremely unlikely.
- YayamiOmate 7y agoI don't care if it's all real or not. The story plus your supplement makes me want not a movie but a multi million budget series. And a phone containing pics stolen inside a govt z building... lol. It's almost too cliche.
- pergadad 7y agothe timeline doesn't seem to work. Who were the kids with the difficult childhood? At 59 now his parents would be in their 70s-80s (if still alive today), so 2019-80y=born 1939 (five years old when the war ended). They could have experienced basic Nazi education but not much more than that. Sure the Nazi beliefs didn't disappear with the end of the third Reich but difficult to really call them that if they were just your average 1960s racists.
- equalunique 7y ago>Who were the kids with the difficult childhood? Obviously I'm not going to give you their names. It was two brothers. 90s kids. As for the grandparents, I should have been more clear about some things. First, this is like 3rd-hand information. Secord, what I'm told by my grandmother for certian was the grandparents had racist, Nazi beliefs that led to the rejection of their grandkids. They weren't neccessarily literal Nazis from WW2. I never asked those kids about these relationships, since it's really personal/private information. It could be that the mother made this story up to get my grandma's sympathies. It's also possible that the 59yo made this up purely to convince the mother that they couldn't have a marriage. It's also possible that it's all true, which is what I've believe. These scenarios of deception are what we might want to believe about people running a "Cyber Bunker," but honestly, I'd be proud to host TPB and WikiLeaks mirrors out of a former NATO Bunker too.
- LyndsySimon 7y agoIt’s also fairly common knowledge that many committed Nazis fled/emigrated from Germany in the immediate aftermath of WW2, and largely settled in South America. I think the majority of those ended up in Argentina or Brazil, but it’s not beyond the realm of possibility to think that someone from Curaçao could have come into contact with the children of those people.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]