(Berlin) The German anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office opened an investigation on Sunday after the alleged perpetrator of the deadly knife attack in Solingen claimed by the Islamic State group (IS), an act that shocked the country and inflamed political debate.
After a day on the run, a 26-year-old Syrian man surrendered to authorities on Saturday evening and “declared responsibility for the attack” that left three dead and eight injured on Friday evening during a community celebration in the western city.
“The federal prosecutor’s office is investigating” the charge of “participation in a terrorist organisation” concerning the main suspect, the federal prosecutor’s office in Karlsruhe (south-west), responsible for anti-terrorism issues, told AFP.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, which shocked Germany. The attacker acted “to avenge the Muslims of Palestine and elsewhere,” the jihadist group said in a statement sent via its propaganda outlet Amaq.
According to several German media outlets, the Syrian suspect, who arrived in the country at the end of December 2022, was subject to an expulsion measure to Bulgaria, a European Union state where his arrival had been registered and where he should have filed his asylum application, under Community rules.
PHOTO THOMAS KIENZLE, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Members of a special police unit escort a man suspected of being responsible for the Solingen stabbing attack from a helicopter to the federal prosecutor’s office in Karlsruhe on August 25.
According to German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, he was not on the security services’ lists of Islamist extremists considered dangerous.
“Stay united”
“Islamist terrorism is one of the greatest dangers to the security of our country. Those who commit such acts must be severely punished,” commented Mr Habeck, a Green minister in Olaf Scholz’s centrist coalition, on Sunday.
Stabbed among thousands of spectators on Friday evening, two men aged 56 and 67 and a 56-year-old woman were killed and eight people injured, four of them seriously.
The assailant attacked his victims “at neck level,” according to police.
Late Saturday, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser visited Solingen, calling on the country to “stay united” and denouncing “those who want to sow hatred.”
The political debate was quick to heat up, however, a week before key regional elections in the east of the country where the far-right AfD party is far ahead of the governing parties in the polls.
Robert Habeck proposed tougher gun laws on Sunday. “Nobody in Germany needs bladed weapons in public. We are not in the Middle Ages,” he said at a press conference.
A measure that is too timid, according to Fridrich Merz, the leader of the CDU conservatives. “It is not the knives that are the problem, but the people who carry them,” he declared, calling on the government to “no longer welcome refugees” from “Syria and Afghanistan.”
The AfD has blamed alleged shortcomings in the migration and security policies of the regions and the state.
“The culprit must be […] “punished with all the rigor of the law,” the Chancellor urged.
Pools of blood
Police also said on Sunday that another person, arrested on Saturday evening in a refugee shelter in Solingen, was considered a “witness”. A 15-year-old boy, suspected of “failure to report” a planned criminal act, was also arrested.
The Solingen Festival was to celebrate the 650the anniversary of this city in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, not far from Düsseldorf and Cologne.
Singer Suzan Köcher, who was on stage at the time of the attack, recounted the dramatic scenes of the evening in an Instagram post. The penultimate song had just finished when screams rang out. “We didn’t know who the attacker was aiming at or whether it was a knife or a gun, which is why I lay down as low as possible,” she wrote.
The deadliest jihadist attack on German soil dates back to December 2016: a truck attack claimed by IS killed 12 people at a Christmas market in the centre of Berlin.