Solingen
stabbing attack: suspect shares Islamic State ideology, say prosecutors
Issa Al H, a
26-year-old Syrian, appears before a judge in Karlsruhe after attack in which
three people died
Jennifer
Rankin in Brussels
Sun 25 Aug
2024 13.35 EDT
Prosecutors
have said the suspect arrested over a stabbing rampage in the western German
city of Solingen shares the ideology of the Islamic State group and was acting
on those beliefs when he attacked.
The
26-year-old Syrian, who had turned himself in, was identified by federal
prosecutors as Issa Al H, with his last name omitted in line with German
privacy laws.
A judge at
the federal court of justice in Karlsruhe ordered that he be held on suspicion
of murder and membership of a terrorist organisation in connection with the
knife attack on Friday, which left three dead and eight wounded at a festival
marking the city’s 650th anniversary.
In a
statement the Office of the Federal Prosecutor said the suspect decided “to
kill the largest possible number of those he considers unbelievers” at the
festival on the basis of his “radical Islamic convictions”.
Islamic
State on Saturday claimed responsibility for the attack without providing any
evidence.
Wearing
handcuffs and leg shackles, the suspect was taken on Sunday from the police
station in Solingen to a first appearance before in court. He had applied for
asylum in Germany, police told the Associated Press.
The frenzied
attack unfolded over a few minutes on Friday evening at a festival of diversity
in Solingen, a city of 160,000 people near Cologne and Düsseldorf. Three people
from the region – one woman and two men – were killed and eight were injured,
four of them seriously.
Citing
officials, the Associated Press reported that a 15-year-old boy was arrested on
suspicion that he knew about the planned attack and failed to inform
authorities, but that he was not the attacker. Two female witnesses told police
they overheard the boy and an unknown person before the attack speaking about
intentions that corresponded to the bloodshed.
The attack
is already stirring debate about Germany’s asylum policy ahead of regional
elections in Saxony and Thuringia on 1 September, where the far-right,
anti-immigration Alternative für Deutschland is expected to do well.
The leader
of the centre-right CDU opposition party Friedrich Merz said Germany should
stop admitting further refugees from Syria and Afghanistan in a letter on his
website entitled “enough is enough”.
Germany’s
chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who has been under pressure to tackle a rise in knife
violence in cities, said on Saturday he was “shocked” by the “terrible event”
and stood with the terrorised city in mourning the victims.
The festival
, which was supposed to run through to Sunday, drawing up to 25,000 people, was
cancelled, as were weekend festivities in nearby towns.
The German
DJ Topic, who is from Solingen, said in a post on Instagram he was performing
on the stage when security personnel approached him and informed him of the
attack.
He was asked
to continue his set “to avoid causing a mass panic”, he said. “So I kept
playing even though it was incredibly hard.” He said he was told to stop 10-15
minutes later, and “since the attacker was still on the run, we hid in a nearby
store while police helicopters circled above us”, he wrote.
“I still
can’t believe it … this was supposed to be a free festival for everyone. Really
close friends of mine were there with their small kids,” he said in a video
recorded in his childhood bedroom. “What’s happening to this world … my
thoughts are with all the victims.”
Germany’s
federal criminal police office has said there have been about a dozen
Islamist-motivated attacks since 2000. One of the biggest was in 2016, when a
Tunisian man drove a lorry into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 and
injuring dozens.
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