Officers stopped the two Bosnian men on Monday evening after the officers believed the vehicle to be acting suspiciously. The two men were initially arrested following the discovery of the grenades in the trunk of the SUV near Dresden Station and remain in provisional custody Die Welt reports.
According to local newspaper Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten, the two Bosnians, aged 17 and 28-years-old had entered the country illegally and also claimed that the hand grenades in their possession were live explosives. Officials also say they found a small amount of a substance described as being narcotics-like.
The state criminal investigation office is said to have taken over the investigation but the background of the two men remains unclear. The pair will likely be charged under the War Weapons Control Act.
The Balkan region has been a major source for criminals across Europe wishing to acquire military-grade weaponry including hand grenades which have become popular with criminal gangs in Sweden in recent years.
According to Bosnian prosecutor Goran Glamocanin, Sweden has become one of the largest markets for Balkan weapons in Europe. “According to the information we have now, the Swedish market is the most attractive in Europe. It is because of the high demand,” he said last year.
While there is a strong market for weapons being smuggled for criminal gangs from Bosnia, there is also a considerable growing threat of radical Islamic extremism emerging from the country.
In 2016, German magazine Der Spiegel noted the large presence of sympathisers of the Islamic State terror group and that hundreds of Bosnians had travelled to the Middle East to fight for them.
President of the Czech Republic Miloš Zeman blamed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for the spread of radical Islamic ideology in the country at a meeting of the Visegrad group (V4) saying,m “All four presidents have clearly agreed that, in particular, there is a risk of further spreading of radical Islam in Bosnia. I am glad that my colleagues have pointed out that this spread is largely funded by Saudi Arabian sources.”