Three months after the deadly knife rampage in Brokstedt that saw two young people murdered and five others injured, public prosecutors in Germany have brought forth charges against the perpetrator, Ibrahim. A., a 34-year-old Palestinian.
Ibrahim. A., who previously compared himself to Anis Amri—an Islamist terrorist who in 2016 killed 13 people and injured 67 after plowing through a Christmas market on Berlin’s Breitscheidplatz with his vehicle—on Thursday, April 27th, was formally charged by the Itzehoe public prosecutor’s office with two counts of murder and four counts of attempted murder, Der Spiegel reports.
“The indictment charges the accused, who is in custody, essentially with two counts of murder and four counts of attempted murder, in each case based on the murder characteristics of base motives and maliciousness,” announced senior public prosecutor Peter Müller-Rakow, the spokesman for the Itzehoe public prosecutor’s office, on Thursday.
The gruesome act, which took place on January 25th and saw Ibrahim A. suddenly attack several passengers with a knife shortly before a regional train traveling from Kiel to Hamburg arrived at the Brokstedt station, prompted widespread outrage, horror, and grief across Germany.
Among the victims was a teenage couple, aged 17 and 19, who had been attending vocational school together in Neumünster before they lost their lives during the attack. Two others were critically injured and three more were seriously injured.
Over 300 friends and family, church representatives, volunteers, and politicians gathered to mourn the victims’ deaths, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), Minister President of Schleswig-Holstein Daniel Günther (CDU), and Hamburg’s Mayor Peter Tschentscher (SPD) attending the ceremony as well.
Ibrahim. A., who, according to his lawyer, does not deny having carried out the heinous act, was previously known to police for multiple criminal offenses, including a separate knife attack. Despite having been on record saying “there is not just one Anis Amri, there are several, I am one too,” he was deemed harmless by a prison psychiatrist and released from custody where he was being held because of an earlier knife attack. Only a few days later, he would go on to murder two and injure five during the knife attack in Schleswig-Holstein.
Presently, Ibrahim. A., a stateless Palestinian who traveled to Germany during the height of the migrant crisis in 2015, remains in police custody. Now, it is up to the Itzehoe district court to decide whether to pursue the charges and set a date for an initial hearing.
