Solingen knife attack puts Germany’s ruling coalition in difficulty – Technologist

The hunt lasted just over 24 hours. It was only late on Saturday evening, August 24, that the suspect in the knife attack that had left three people dead and eight injured the previous day in Solingen, western Germany, was arrested and confessed, according to the police. According to Der Spiegel, which quoted sources close to the investigation shortly before midnight, he surrendered to police officers on patrol, his clothes stained with blood. The weekly reported that it was Issa Al H., a 26-year-old Syrian born in Deir ez-Zor, who has been living in Germany since 2022, where he has applied for asylum. A year after his arrival in Germany, he was granted subsidiary protection, a status accorded to people who can prove that they are threatened in their own country due to armed conflict. According to the weekly, he was not known to the German security services as an Islamist.

This detail is important because, three hours before his arrest, the Islamic State (IS) organization claimed responsibility for the murderous attack that struck Solingen on Friday evening. “The man who attacked the Christian gathering in the town of Solingen was a soldier of the Islamic State and carried out his act to avenge Muslims in Palestine and everywhere,” said the terrorist organization via its Amaq propaganda agency, which broadcast the news on social media shortly before 8:30 pm. The investigation will therefore have to determine whether the man arrested on Saturday evening did indeed have links with the IS, whether the latter directly inspired his act or whether it was an opportunistic claim.

At the same time, the police announced that an intervention mobilizing elite units was underway at a refugee hostel in the city. Earlier in the day, the authorities had announced the arrest of a 15-year-old teenager who, according to several witnesses, had been heard discussing a knife attack with a man believed to be the murderer, Düsseldorf’s public prosecutor, Markus Caspers, told a press conference on Saturday afternoon.

The previous day, the attack struck Solingen at around 9:40 pm, the evening of the opening of the Festival of Diversity, which was due to welcome some 70,000 visitors until Sunday to mark the 650^th anniversary of this industrial city of 160,000 inhabitants located between Cologne and Düsseldorf and renowned – in a grim irony of fate – for its knife and razor blade factories. It was here, in the heart of the city, that the attacker fatally stabbed two men, aged 56 and 67, and a 56-year-old woman, and wounded eight others, four of them very seriously, before fleeing the scene.

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