A Syrian man who allegedly supports the Islamic State group has been charged with attempted murder over the stabbing of a Spanish tourist at Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial, prosecutors said Tuesday.
The suspect, a refugee partially identified as Wassim Al M., is said to have seriously injured the 30-year-old man at the landmark in the German capital in February.
It was one of a series of attacks blamed on foreign nationals that fuelled a bitter debate about immigration in the run-up to Germany’s general election.
The suspect “shares the ideology of the foreign terrorist organisation Islamic State (IS)” and has “radical Islamist and antisemitic views”, federal prosecutors said in a statement.
He had travelled from the eastern city of Leipzig, where he had been living, to Berlin to target “alleged infidels, whom he regarded as representatives of a Western form of society that he rejected”, prosecutors said.
Shortly before the stabbing, the suspect, who was 19 at the time, sent a photo of himself to IS members so the group could claim responsibility for the attack, they said.
Advertisement
The tourist, from the Basque Country in northern Spain, was wounded in the neck during the attack at Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a sombre grid of concrete steles located near the Brandenburg Gate and the US embassy.
The suspect, who was arrested shortly after the attack and is in pre-trial detention, has also been charged with causing serious bodily harm and attempted membership of a foreign terrorist organisation.
Officials said previously he had arrived in Germany in 2023.
The attack was one of several which shocked Germany ahead of the general election, which saw a doubling in the vote-share for the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD).
The election was won by the centre-right CDU/CSU, which has since taken power at the head of a coalition and moved swiftly to introduce stricter curbs on immigration.
The new government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz has signalled it is trying to resume deportations to Syria, which have been suspended since 2012.
READ ALSO: Taliban to send envoys to Germany to work on deportations
/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Dienrx9XUAAXvzk.jpeg "Ramaphosa effectively blocks IGI from testifying on criminal claims against top cops Masemola, Khumalo")
Discussion about this post