The Syrian man, who stabbed and injured five people with a knife and a sword in front of a bar in the western German city of Bielefeld, had previously been in contact with three Islamists known to the police, according to German media reports.
Mahmoud Mhemed’s mobile phone was found during the search of his room in an asylum shelter, and the data revealed that he had contacts to three known Islamists, two of whom have been accused of terrorism.
The federal prosecutor’s office said the perpetrator’s crimes were motivated by religious motives. According to his roommates at the shelter, Mhemed became radicalised in the past six months, and spoke of “going to war” for the Islamic State (ISIS) terror organisation.
The Syrian man, who came to Germany as an asylum seeker in 2023, originally comes from Raqqa, the “capital” of the Islamic State between 2014 and 2017 when the organisation proclaimed a caliphate in large parts of Syria and Iraq.
