The 27-year-old Syrian, who injured four men with a knife in an ICE on Saturday morning, some seriously, is said to have committed the act in a state of paranoid schizophrenia.

He suffered from delusional ideas.

This was announced on Sunday at a press conference in Neumarkt in the Upper Palatinate by the Chief Public Prosecutor of the responsible public prosecutor's office in Nuremberg-Fürth.

This was the result of a preliminary psychiatric report by a very experienced expert.

A detailed assessment will be made in the course of the investigation.

There are allegedly no indications that the man has ever received psychiatric treatment. 

Timo Frasch

Political correspondent in Munich.

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The suspect, who was born in Damascus and who came to Germany in 2014, had, according to the current state of the investigation, pulled a jackknife with a blade about eight centimeters long on the train that was traveling with 208 people from Passau to Hamburg between Regensburg and Nuremberg, and initially one 26-year-old man badly injured in the head - apparently without any warning. The investigators assume that the suspect is malicious because of the innocence of the victim and accuse him of attempted murder in unity with dangerous bodily harm. 

Then the man attacked a 60-year-old passenger and another sixty-year-old who wanted to help him in the same car. In these two cases, the allegation is attempted manslaughter or willful assault. The fourth victim, a 39-year-old man who suffered stab wounds to the upper body, was located one wagon further and, according to the investigators, was also completely surprised by the knife attack, which is why they assume attempted murder and dangerous bodily harm. The victims come from the Passau and Regensburg area, the two younger ones were treated in hospitals on Sunday.

Shortly before nine o'clock on Saturday, a young woman from the moving train had called the police.

"A short time later," according to the police, two patrol cars were at the point near the Upper Palatinate municipality of Seubersdorf where the train had come to a stop.

A train attendant gave them access to the train.

The accused, who did not resist the arrest at gunpoint, said he was sick and needed help.

In the allegedly detailed conversation with the expert, he did not deny the acts, rather stated that he had felt persecuted by the police for some time.

He was watched by men who wanted to drive him crazy. 

Have committed acts "like in a dream"

The investigators made it clear that "there are no police measures taken against the accused". He was only targeted by the police once, in 2020 due to a "minor fraud" for which he had already been convicted. The accused said he attacked his first victim because he thought the man wanted to kill him. He committed the other acts “as if in a dream”. Because up to now it has been assumed that a person was incapable of guilt at the time of the offense, an investigating judge at the Nuremberg District Court issued an order for detention rather than an arrest; the man was housed in the Regensburg District Hospital until the main hearing began.

According to the investigators, he applied for asylum in 2015, was recognized as a refugee in 2016 and has had a residence permit since then. He stayed in Lower Bavaria all the time, most recently apparently in an apartment in a "block of apartments" in Passau. The man, who is not a student, was doing a job but was fired the day before the crime. 


The investigators currently see no evidence of an Islamist or terrorist background to the crime.

There is also no evidence of accomplices or accomplices, not even any planning or preparation of the crime.

The investigators also did not consider the fact that they were carrying a knife as an indication that the accused had explained them with the delusions.

Nevertheless, the investigation was carried out in his private environment, in Bavaria, Thuringia and, last but not least, in North Rhine-Westphalia, where the man's parents and siblings live.

There were "numerous interrogations and searches" there.

In addition to a psychological motive, "every other motive will be kept in focus," the investigators assured. 

The measures on the train apparently also supported a 29-year-old federal police officer who had privately ridden the ICE.

A couple of doctors provided first aid.