German prosecutors have warned of further “lone wolf” attacks after a 26 year-old Syrian man confessed to killing three people in a knife attack on Friday evening.
The attack at a festival in the western city of Solingen, near Düsseldorf, left eight people injured and has been claimed by the terror organisation Islamic State (IS) as “revenge for Muslims in Palestine and elsewhere”.
On Sunday afternoon the chief suspect was brought before a remand judge who ordered that he be held on suspicion of murder and membership of a terrorist organisation in connection with the attack. He is also suspected of attempted murder and serious bodily injury, prosecutors said.
Images showed special forces police leading a barefoot man, identified as Issa al H., to the remand hearing wearing goggles, ear protectors and a white glove on his left, apparently injured, hand.
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Germany’s federal prosecutor accuses him of joining IS some time before the attacks.
“Due to his radical Islamist convictions, he decided to kill as many people as possible at the Solingen city festival,” the prosecutors added. “He stabbed visitors to the festival repeatedly and deliberately in the neck and upper body area with a knife.”
The attacker killed two men and a woman, aged between 56 and 67, and injured eight others, four critically, though their condition had stabilised on Sunday.
A 26-hour search for the man ended on Saturday evening when, in a heavy shower, a man in bloody clothes left a yard where he had hidden himself and approached a group of police. They had found a bloody jacket, containing his wallet and ID, which he apparently discarded near the scene of the attack.
According to reports the man came to Germany in December 2022, sought asylum and was not known to authorities as an Islamist extremist. According to Der Spiegel magazine he evaded deportation to Bulgaria in June 2023 which, according to EU rules, was responsible for his asylum application.
His weapon was a regular kitchen knife.
“It’s particularly shocking that the perpetrator just strolled out the door with a knife and immediately attacked people,” said an unnamed prosecutor to the Bild tabloid. “The worry is that we have many of such lone wolves ... that can hit out at any time.”
Police are also questioning 15-year-old detained on Saturday and accused of having prior knowledge of the planned attack. He has reportedly refused to give evidence. Another 36-year-old man was arrested on Saturday evening at a refugee accommodation in Solingen after a tip-off.
Fatal stabbings and shootings are relatively rare in Germany but a recent wave of attacks has prompted the federal government to present plans to reduce the maximum size of knives that can carried in public.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that “everything must be done to ensure law and order prevail”.
But Friday’s attack - and the chief suspect - carry echoes of last June when a 25-year-old Afghan man fatally stabbed a 29 year-old policeman. Then Mr Scholz promised his government would step up “in a major way” the deportation of violent asylum seekers.
While his coalition discusses widening bans on carrying knives in public, opposition politicians have urged the government to go further.
“Knives are not the problem but the people running around with them,” said Mr Friedrich Merz, head of the opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
The attacks could have a knock-on effect on regional elections in the eastern states of Thuringia and Saxony, where fears about violent asylum seekers have boosted support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
The party’s interior spokesman Gottfried Curio attacked the “ritualised” expressions of sorrow from politicians who were “willing to go over dead bodies rather than call the problem by its name”.
