A passenger on the ICE between Regensburg and Nuremberg is said to have tried to kill several “infidels” for Islamist reasons. Some of the victims were seriously injured. Now the man has been charged.
Karlsruhe/Munich (dpa/lby) – More than eight months after the knife attacks by a suspected Islamist on travelers in an ICE in the Upper Palatinate, the federal prosecutor’s office has brought charges against the man. Among other things, he is accused of attempted murder and dangerous bodily harm, as the Karlsruhe investigators announced on Monday. The trial is to take place at the Munich Higher Regional Court, a hearing date has not yet been announced.
On November 6, 2021, the then 27-year-old suddenly attacked four men on the Passau-Hamburg long-distance train between Regensburg and Nuremberg, some of them seriously injured. He approached a seated passenger from behind and stabbed him eight times in the head, neck and chest. After the crime, the ICE made an unscheduled stopover in Seubersdorf (Neumarkt district). Police officers searched the train there and arrested the alleged perpetrator.
Immediately afterwards, according to the federal prosecutor, he described himself as mentally ill. He was therefore initially admitted to the district hospital in Regensburg. The accused is said to have hit a male nurse there “for radical Islamic motives” at the end of December.
In March, the Attorney General took over the investigation – there were “serious indications of an Islamist background” to the crime. The statement now states that by September 2021 at the latest, the accused made the decision to make a contribution to global jihad by killing “infidel” non-Muslims in Germany indiscriminately.
For this reason he attacked the train passengers. “According to the results of a detailed psychiatric examination and further investigations” it can now be assumed that the man does not suffer from a mental illness.
So far, it had always been said that the man was Syrian. Now there is talk of a “Palestinian national”. He has been in custody in a correctional facility since January.