Paranoid, racism, conspiracy, socially isolated but educated ... Tobias Rathjen, 43, is the only suspect in the double shooting in Hanau (Germany), which killed nine people on Wednesday.
A 24-page video and manifesto was found by the investigators. The man was found dead near his mother who was shot dead.
Who is Tobias Rathjen?
Tobias Rathjen presents himself on his website as a German born in 1977 in Hanau, a city of nearly 100,000 inhabitants in central Germany. He grew up there and studied. After his baccalaureate, he trained as a bank advisor in Frankfurt, then studied management in Bayreuth (Bavaria) between 2000 and 2007. He then worked for a financial service provider, then as a customer advisor for a comparison online in Munich where he rented an apartment, according to the Spiegel .
Eternal single, he lived in Hanau with his parents, both 72 years old, very close to the second bar in question, in a popular district. Member of two sports shooting clubs and a football club in Munich, he remained socially isolated, recounts the Spiegel . His former work colleagues describe a "workaholic", sometimes with 12-hour days, "very ambitious" who "even took ping-pong matches seriously" but with a "close to zero" relationship.
"Always watched"
In his manifesto, where meticulous and inexpressive drawings appear supposed to represent him in different situations of his life, he claims to have been spied on since childhood by a "secret organization" who could "read his mind". Among the "thoughts" he claims to have seen come true, he evokes pell-mell: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan launched by the United States; his wish, "realized" in 2004, to see Jürgen Klinsmann become coach of the German football team and several Hollywood films whose scenario he had imagined ("Hello mom, here baby", "The Cell", "Starship Troopers" ).
"None of this can be a coincidence," he said, adding that he had complained three times, to no avail. In an attempt to confront this "threat", he had contacted a mental trainer. "I think he saw someone inside me who had answers to his questions," said Bild Bernd Gloggnitzer, who replied that he couldn't help him.
Racist and conspiratorial motivations
Questioned by the Spiegel , his former colleagues knew his racist inclinations: "for him, the far right AfD was not radical enough". In his manifesto, he calls for "wiping out" the population of at least 24 countries, ranging from the Maghreb to the Middle East via Israel, advancing supremacist theses. Convinced of the supremacy of the German people and admirer of American President Donald Trump, he urged the United States to take the lead in the fight to "save the West", in particular to counter the growing influence of China.
In a video posted on YouTube a week before his crimes, which has since been deleted, he called in English "all Americans" to "wake up", claiming that their "country is under the control of invisible secret societies" that use "methods unknown evil like mind control. " He also mentions the existence of "underground military bases" in which some people "praise the devil", "mistreat, torture and kill small children". Its website also included sections on missing persons, on allegedly secret U.S. government research into extraterrestrials, and on CIA psychological experiences in the 1950s and 1960s.
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