Suspected knifeman named and charged with murder after three people killed at German festival
Syrian national, Issa Al H has been named as the man suspected of carrying out a knife attack at a festival in Germany.
A 56-year-old woman and two men, aged 56 and 67, were killed during the attack in the city of Solingen.
German prosecutors have accused the 26-year-old of being “a member of a terrorist organisation abroad”, who shares the “ideology of Islamic State” (IS).
He has also been charged with three counts of murder, attempted murder and dangerous bodily harm in eight cases.
The 26-year-old, who had applied for asylum, turned himself in and admitted to the crime following a large-scale manhunt.
In a joint statement from Dusseldorf police and prosecutors, they said that “due to his radical Islamist convictions” he attempted to kill as many people as possible that he considered to be non-believers.
He repeatedly stabbed his victims in the neck and upper body, aiming specifically for those areas, officers said.
The interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia state, Herbert Reul, said: “The real suspect is the one that we’ve arrested just now.”
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The 26-year-old is being currently questioned and evidence has been seized. He added that the man has ties with a home for refugees that had been searched earlier.
Der Spiegel reported that the man moved to Germany late in 2022 and sought asylum.
On Saturday, Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack. ISIS described the man who carried out the attack as a “soldier of the Islamic State” in a statement on its Telegram account.
They wrote: “He carried out the attack in revenge for Muslims in Palestine and everywhere.”
The suspect stabbed passers-by who were attending a city festival in Solingen at around 9.45pm (local time) last night.
Officers received calls from witnesses alerting them to reports of several people being wounded in the city and following this, a major emergency was declared by local police.
The incident took place at a festival in Solingen – some 25 kilometres from Dusseldorf – which began on Friday and was supposed to continue over the weekend. Approximately 80,000 people were expected to head there for the celebrations.
A German musician known as Topic said he was playing on a nearby stage when the incident occurred. He was asked “to avoid causing a mass panic attack”, he posted on Instagram.
The DJ was eventually told to stop, and “since the attacker was still on the run, we hid in a nearby store while police helicopters circled above us,” he wrote online.
Authorities cancelled the remainder of the weekend festival.