According to the investigators, the fatal knife attack in Würzburg suggests that there was “an Islamist background to the acts”.
References to propaganda material or other extremist content have not yet been found in the 24-year-old suspect from Somalia, the Munich Public Prosecutor's Office and the State Criminal Police Office announced on Tuesday.
More than 130 police forces are currently working on the case, it said.
The investigators assume an Islamist motive because, according to eyewitnesses, the suspect Somali is said to have shouted “Allahu Akbar” (“God is greatest”) twice during the crime. In the sickbed of a Würzburg clinic, he is said to have described the act as his “jihad”, that is, as a “holy war”. A forensic psychiatric report should clarify the question of culpability and possible placement in a psychiatric ward.
Last Saturday, the Central Office for Extremism and Terrorism (ZET) of the Munich Public Prosecutor's Office took over the investigation against the man, the State Criminal Police Office set up the special commission (Soko) “Main” and is currently investigating the crime together with the Lower Franconia Police Headquarters. They receive support from experts from the Federal Criminal Police Office, from translators and from Islamic scholars, as the authorities announced.
In Würzburg, a 24-year-old Somali man took a knife in a department store on Friday and stabbed three women aged 82, 49 and 24. He then seriously injured four other women, an 11-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy in the city center. All of them are now out of danger, the LKA said. Another man was slightly injured by the Somali.