The investigating judge at the German Federal Court ordered this Sunday the imprisonment of the alleged perpetrator of the knife attack in Solingen (western Germany), which left three people dead last Friday and which was later claimed by the jihadist group Islamic State (IS).
The detained Syrian national is accused of three counts of murder and eight other counts of attempted murder, as well as one related to the incident, according to a statement from the state attorney general’s office. Foreign terrorist organizations,
According to the note, investigators believe that the suspect Issa al-H. shares the radical Islamic ideology of the IS and that is why he took this decision. “Kill as many people as possible disloyal from their point of view”.
For this reason, at the Solingen municipal festival “he repeatedly attacked festival visitors with a knife in the back and aimed it at the neck and torso,” the prosecutor’s office said.
Search against the clock
After killing three people and leaving four others in critical condition, the suspect – who until then was not known to have Islamist tendencies – fled amid the confusion.
This began a race against the police clock that was to last nearly 24 hours, until Al H. flagged down a police patrol car and told officers, his clothes still stained with blood, “I’m the one you’re looking for”, according to media.
The alleged attacker is believed to have been hiding in an inner courtyard near the site of the attack, in the centre of Solingen, after retrieving the murder weapon, a kitchen knife, from the refugee centre where he lived.
During Saturday, police detained two people — one of them a 15-year-old juvenile — but neither of them turned out to be suspects.
ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack
According to media, Al H. is originally from the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor, located in the east of the country and which was under IS control for three years, from where he was liberated in 2017.
According to sources cited by German media, the suspect arrived in Germany in 2022, but it was decided to deport him to Bulgaria, which was responsible for processing his asylum application as it was his country of entry to the EU.
However, Al H. managed to evade the authorities until the deportation order expired and then obtained a temporary residence permit after his right to subsidiary protection as a Syrian citizen was recognized.
IS claimed responsibility for the Solingen attack on Saturday, saying it was carried out by “one of its soldiers” to “avenge the war against Palestine and Muslims everywhere”.
According to terrorism experts, this is the first attack claimed by IS on German soil since 2016, when 13 people were killed when a truck rammed into a Christmas market, although authorities are still analysing the veracity of the manifesto in this case.
More deportations and a ban on knives
The attack has revived the debate over security measures in Germany a week before regional elections in several federal states in the east of the country, in which the far right is the favorite.
The interior minister, Social Democrat Nancy Fesser, has long advocated banning knives on public streets, a proposal that liberal coalition partners have joined in the wake of the attack.
“We must tighten gun laws,” Vice Chancellor and Economy Minister Robert Habeck also declared this Sunday, pointing out that Islamic terrorism “threatens our way of life.”
The condemnation was echoed by Friedrich Merz, head of the Christian Democratic opposition, who called for a complete halt to the reception of refugees from Syria and Afghanistan, saying “Knives are not the problem, but the people who walk around with them.”
On the other hand, Saskia Esken, co-leader of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), spoke this Sunday in favor of starting the deportation of convicted criminals and Islamic extremists to Syria and Afghanistan, a measure that is difficult to implement legally and which the conservative opposition has long demanded.