Germany: ‘Islamist Extremist Kills Police Officer’; Several Injured (Worthy News Focus)
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
BERLIN (Worthy News) – Authorities in Germany say they believe an Islamist extremist carried out a knife attack in the southwestern city of Mannheim that killed a young police officer and left five others injured.
In comments monitored by Worthy News on Tuesday, Justice Minister Marco Buschmann said, “There are now clear indications of an Islamist motive” for the stabbing, adding to concerns about the rise of radical Islam in Germany.
The federal prosecutor, Germany’s highest prosecuting authority for terrorism, espionage, and international criminal law, is taking the case due to its “particular importance,” a spokeswoman said.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz wrote on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, that he was “deeply grieved” and that the officer’s “commitment to the safety of us all deserves the highest recognition.”
On Monday, around 8,000 people gathered in Mannheim to pay their respects to the 29-year-old police officer who, on Sunday, succumbed to injuries sustained from stab wounds.
Two dozen of the officer’s colleagues paid tribute to their fallen comrade, removing their hats during a gathering Sunday at the site of the attack.
The bloodshed unfolded Friday during a rally held by the political group Buergerbewegung Pax Europa (BPE), which opposes “political Islam.”
ASYLUM REQUEST
Investigators said the alleged assailant, a 25-year-old man from Afghanistan who had lived in Germany since 2014 and had his asylum request rejected, stabbed several people.
Five members of the BPE were injured, along with a police officer who tried to stop the attack. The 29-year-old officer, who wasn’t publicly named, died of his injuries on Sunday, authorities said.
Police quickly put an end to the attack by reportedly shooting the assailant, who was wounded. The stabbing came several days before Germany votes in European Parliament elections with campaigns focusing on migration.
Friday’s attack prompted calls from opposition and governing party politicians for authorities to enable deportations to Afghanistan, which were suspended when the Taliban group took power there in 2021, and to Syria.
Germany was among the leading countries accepting migrants fleeing war, persecution, and poverty in 2015 during what was then Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War Two.
More than a million people, many from Syria and Afghanistan, applied for asylum in 2015-2016 alone after then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke her famous words “Wir schaffen das!” (“We can do this!”)
Yet, after a series of attacks, questions have been raised about the ongoing influx of people from Islamic countries.
ISLAMIST EXTREMISM SPREADING
While most have integrated, tens of thousands are believed to be Islamist extremists, according to German authorities.
Before Friday’s stabbing, four teenagers were detained in Germany suspected of planning Islamic terror attacks against churches or synagogues, police said.
Three of the suspects, two girls who are 15 and 16, and a 15-year-old boy, came from various parts of the western North Rhine-Westphalia state, Germany’s most populous.
They were arrested after a court issued warrants for them over the Easter weekend, prosecutors in the city of Duesseldorf said at the time.
Separately, prosecutors in Stuttgart said a 16-year-old suspect is in custody on “suspicion that he was preparing a serious crime endangering the state.”
Germany’s biggest-selling daily, Bild, reported that the four youths were allegedly planning to carry out petrol bombs and knife attacks in the name of the Islamic State group. The report added that the suspects were also weighing whether to obtain firearms.
Earlier in March, two Afghans linked to Islamic State were arrested in Germany in March on suspicion of planning an attack around Sweden’s parliament in retaliation for burnings of the Koran, deemed a holy book by Muslims.
NEW YEAR’S ATTACK
Previously, in January, police detained three people over an alleged plan to target the cathedral in Cologne on New Year’s Eve.
The suspects were reportedly Tajiks acting for Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K), the same group believed to have been behind March’s deadly massacre in a Moscow concert hall.
In October, German prosecutors also charged two Syrian brothers for planning an attack inspired by Islamic State on a church in Sweden.
Islamist extremists have carried out several attacks in Germany in recent years, the deadliest being a truck rampage at a Berlin Christmas market in December 2016 that killed 12 people.
In December 2022, a Syrian-born Islamist was jailed for 14 years for a knife attack on a train in Bavaria in which four people were injured.
The number of people considered Islamist extremists in Germany only slightly fell from 28,290 in 2021 to 27,480 in 2022, according to a report from the BfV federal domestic intelligence agency.
However, authorities warn the dangers of Islamist extremism are spreading throughout Germany.
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