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Dresden (AP) - Six months after the fatal knife attack on two tourists in Dresden, the trial against the suspect began on Monday at the Dresden Higher Regional Court.
The 21-year-old thought the men were a homosexual couple and wanted to punish them with death for what he saw as a “serious sin”, said a representative of the federal prosecutor's office at the beginning of the State Security Senate.
She accuses the radical Islamist from Syria of murder, attempted murder and dangerous physical harm.
According to the indictment, the young man has been planning an attack in Germany for years, but he was unable to carry it out due to imprisonment.
On the evening of October 4, 2020, he killed a 55-year-old from Krefeld and seriously injured a 53-year-old from Cologne with previously purchased kitchen knives.
As “representatives of a liberal and open social order that he rejected as“ unbelieving ”, they were random victims, said public prosecutor Marco Mayer.
The defendant came to Germany as a refugee in 2015.
In 2018 he was sentenced to a youth sentence by the Dresden Higher Regional Court in 2018 for advertising the terror network Islamic State (IS), which was increased after attacks on officials in prison.
He was only released at the end of September 2020.
After the bloody act on October 4, he was initially able to escape undetected and was caught just three weeks later.
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