The investigating judge of the German Federal Court on Sunday ordered the imprisonment of the alleged perpetrator of the knife attack which left three dead last Friday in Solingen (western Germany) and which was subsequently claimed by the jihadist group Islamic State (IS).
According to a statement from the State Attorney General’s Office, the detainee, a Syrian national, is accused of murder in three cases and attempted murder in eight others, as well as membership in a group foreign terrorist organization.
According to the note, investigators assume that Issa Al H., the suspect, shares the radical Islamist ideology of ISIS and that this is why he made the decision to “kill as many people as possible from their unfaithful point of view.”
This is why, at the Solingen municipal festival, “he stabbed festival-goers with a knife in the back several times, aiming for the neck and torso,” the public prosecutor’s office said.
Research against the clock
After killing three people and leaving four others in critical condition, the suspect – previously little known for his Islamist leanings – fled amid the confusion.
It was the start of a police race against time that was supposed to last about 24 hours, until Al H. stopped a police cruiser and told officers, his clothes still stained with blood, “I’m the one you’re looking for,” according to media reports.
It appears that after disposing of the murder weapon, a kitchen knife, from the refugee centre where he was living, the alleged attacker remained hidden in an inner courtyard near the scene of the attack in the centre of Solingen.
On Saturday, police arrested two individuals, including a 15-year-old boy, but neither of them turned out to be the suspect.
Islamic State claims responsibility for attack
According to media reports, Al H. is from the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor, located in the east of the country and which remained under the control of ISIS for three years, from which it was liberated in 2017.
In 2022, the suspect arrived in Germany, but it was decided to deport him to Bulgaria, which was responsible for processing his asylum application as it was the country of entry into the EU, according to sources cited by German media.
However, Al H. managed to evade the authorities until the expulsion order expired and was subsequently granted a temporary residence permit, his right to subsidiary protection being recognised as a Syrian citizen.
IS claimed responsibility for the Solingen attack on Saturday, saying it was carried out by “one of its soldiers” as revenge “for the Muslims of Palestine and around the world.”
Terrorism experts say this is the first attack claimed by IS on German soil since 2016, when 13 people died after a truck crashed into a Christmas market, although authorities are still analyzing the veracity of the manifesto in this case.
No more expulsions and a ban on knives
The attack has rekindled the debate over security measures in Germany, a week before regional elections in several eastern states, where the far right is the favourite.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, a Social Democrat, has long advocated banning knives on public roads, a proposal that the liberal coalition partners supported following the attack.
“We must strengthen the law on firearms,” Vice Chancellor and Minister of Economy Robert Habeck also said on Sunday, stressing that Islamist terrorism “endangers our way of life.”
“The problem is not the knives, but the people who walk around with them,” denounced the leader of the Christian Democrat opposition, Friedrich Merz, who called for a complete end to the reception of refugees from Syria and Afghanistan.
In contrast, the co-leader of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), Saskia Esken, spoke out on Sunday in favor of starting to deport convicted criminals and Islamist extremists to Syria and Afghanistan, a measure that is difficult to implement legally and which the conservative opposition has long demanded.
