A 26-year-old Syrian asylum seeker has confessed to being the perpetrator of the brutal knife attack committed on Friday in the western German city of Solingen, for which the Islamic State terror group has claimed responsibility.
The man stabbed several attendees at the city’s ‘Festival of Diversity’ (‘Festival der Vielfalt’) on Friday evening. The perpetrator attacked visitors in front of the stage where live bands were playing.
Three people were killed, two men aged 56 and 67, and a 56-year-old woman. Eight people were wounded, four of whom remain in a serious condition. All of the victims were stabbed in the neck.
The ‘Festival of Diversity,’ organised to celebrate Solingen’s 650-year history, has been completely cancelled.
The attacker fled the scene, and a manhunt ensued. The Syrian man eventually gave himself up late on Saturday and declared himself responsible for the attack. German prosecutors said they have launched a terrorist investigation and ordered the pre-trial detention of the man, who is suspected of belonging to a terrorist group.
“Due to his radical Islamist convictions” he tried to kill as many people as possible whom he considered to be non-believers, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement. They added that the suspect, identified as “Syrian national Issa Al H.,” will be detained over “strong suspicions of belonging to a terrorist group abroad” as well as of murder and attempted murder.
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, saying “the perpetrator of the attack on a gathering of Christians” in Solingen “was a soldier of the Islamic State.” The group said the attack was carried out as “revenge for Muslims in Palestine and everywhere,” in an apparent reference to the Gaza conflict.
According to German media reports, the perpetrator arrived in Germany as an asylum seeker in December 2022. His asylum claim was denied and should have been deported last year. He lived in a home for refugees in Solingen that was searched on Saturday. A suspect was arrested there, and was being considered a “witness.” A 15-year-old boy was also arrested, suspected of failing to report a criminal act.
The danger posed by Islamist extremism in Germany, as well as many parts of Western Europe, has increased significantly following Hamas’s terror attack on Israel on October 7th last year. Terrorists linked to the Islamic State have plotted many attacks in recent months, targeting churches and synagogues, and the Euro 2024 football tournament in Germany. The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) said in the report earlier this year that “the risk of jihadist-motivated acts of violence remains high, Germany remains a direct target of terrorist organizations.”
The country has also suffered a wave of knife attacks committed by mostly Afghan and Syrian migrants, prompting more and more politicians to demand that the government deport dangerous criminals back to Afghanistan and Syria, two countries deemed unsafe for return. A recent police report into crime in Germany revealed that “in relation to the total population, non-Germans are statistically six times more likely to resort to knives in an attack than German citizens. And in sexual crimes, it is seven times more likely.”
Despite the increasing danger to ordinary citizens’ lives, leading politicians resorted to the usual rhetoric about the need for more security and tougher action. Instead of denouncing Islamic terrorism and the lax migrant policies introduced by her government, Social Democrat interior minister Nancy Faeser, who has in recent years been more focused on attacking and trying to ban the anti-immigration Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) than fighting crime, denounced “those who want to stir up hatred.”
Friedrich Merz, leader of the opposition centre-right CDU, which welcomed hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants during the leadership of Chancellor Angela Merkel, said the country should stop admitting further refugees from Syria and Afghanistan. “It is not the knives that are the problem, but the people walking around with them,” Merz said, referring to a recent suggestion by the government that the legal limit for knives carried in public should be shortened to 6 centimetres.
“An asylum seeker whose asylum is rejected must leave the country,” said Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder, head of the CDU’s sister party, CSU.
Björn Höcke, the leader of the AfD’s Thuringia branch expressed his outrage in a post on social media platform X: “Do you really want to get used to this? Free yourselves and end this insanity of forced multiculturalism.”
Thuringia and Saxony, two eastern German states, are set to hold state elections on September 1st, and the citizens of a third eastern state, Brandenburg will also head to the polls on September 22nd. The failed migration policies of recent governments will likely have an effect on the outcome of the elections. The AfD and another anti-immigration party, left-wing nationalist Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, are both polling strongly in all three states, and are expected to get between 40 and 50 percent of all votes.
Instead of demonstrating against the rise of unwanted foreign criminals, left-wing groups organised rallies against the AfD on Sunday in Saxony and Thuringia. Meanwhile, mayor of Leipzig Burkhard Jung (of the Social Democrats) warned of the danger of right-wing extremism.
