The attack took place on Friday in connection with the city’s 650th anniversary. Eight people were injured, five of them seriously.
On Sunday, German police stated that the man, who is 26 years old and originally from Syria, has admitted to being behind the attack.
“The role of this person is currently under intense investigation,” said a joint statement from the Düsseldorf police and the federal prosecutor’s office.
On Sunday morning, it became known that the federal prosecutor’s office took over the investigation from the local police. A spokesperson told the German news agency DPA that they suspect the accused 26-year-old is a member of the Islamist extremist group IS.
Not known extremist
According to Der Spiegel, the man came to Germany in 2022. He was not known as an extremist by the security authorities, the newspaper writes.
The man is said to have reported to a police patrol.
To the broadcaster ARD, Herbert Reul, Minister of the Interior in North Rhine-Westphalia, states that the police have caught the actual perpetrator. According to the Minister of the Interior, the man is connected to a refugee reception where the police carried out an operation earlier in the day.
The police have also arrested a 15-year-old who they believe may have known about the plans before the knife attack. During the action against the refugee reception, a third person was also arrested. According to the Minister of the Interior in the state, neither of these two was the likely perpetrator.
IS says they were behind it
IS released a statement on Saturday in which they claimed responsibility for the knife attack. The group claims in the statement that it is a revenge attack for “Muslims in Palestine and elsewhere”.
– The perpetrator behind the attack on a gathering of Christians in the town of Solingen in Germany yesterday was a soldier from IS, says the message published by the group’s propaganda channel Amaq.
However, IS has not released any material to prove the claim.
Call it terror
The attack took place on the Fronhof, a square in the center of the city, where a concert stage had been set up. The police’s task leader Thorsten Fleiss states that those killed were a 56-year-old man, a 67-year-old man and a 56-year-old woman.
The head of government in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Hendrik Wüst, on Saturday referred to the attack in Solingen as an act of terrorism, according to Reuters.
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2024-08-25 10:52:11
