The 26-year-old Syrian suspected of links to radical Islam was arrested on Thursday, September 12, for planning a machete attack on German soldiers, the Munich prosecutor’s office said on Friday.
The suspect had just obtained “two machetes” with which he planned to attack a town in Bavaria, “German army soldiers who spent their lunch break there, and to kill as many of them as possible”a press release from the Munich public prosecutor’s office said on Friday, September 13. The man, a 26-year-old Syrian, is suspected of having links to radical Islam. He was arrested on Thursday, September 12.
“By his act, the accused wanted to cause a sensation and arouse a feeling of insecurity among the population”the prosecutor’s office said. According to the latter, the attack was planned in the municipality of Hof, located some 150 kilometers north of Nuremberg and where there is a Bundeswehr barracks in which several hundred soldiers are stationed. The section for combating extremism and terrorism of the Munich prosecutor’s office (south) is in charge of the investigation.
German security services on alert
“If an Islamist motive is confirmed, this is further evidence of the high threat posed by Islamist terrorism in Germany.”commented a spokesperson for the Interior Ministry in Berlin. Since the knife attack in Solingen (in western Germany, North Rhine-Westphalia) at the end of August and claimed by the jihadist group Islamic State, the German security services have been on alert. The alleged perpetrator of the attack that left three dead was a 26-year-old Syrian. He was arrested shortly after the incident.
Last week, on September 5th – the anniversary of the Munich Olympics hostage-taking – an attempted attack targeted the Israeli Consulate General in Munich. It was carried out by an 18-year-old Austrian, known for his Islamist sympathies. He was shot dead in the center of the Bavarian capital.
The same week, a 29-year-old Albanian suspected of Islamist radicalization tried to force his way into a police station in a city in the southwest of the country, armed with a machete, to attack officers, before being arrested. These events have brought the jihadist security threat back to the forefront in Germany, pushing the government of Social Democrat Chancellor Olaf Scholz to announce new measures to combat radical Islam and to toughen immigration policy. Berlin will thus, from Monday, generalize controls at the country’s borders.
The Islamist threat has increased since the start of the conflict on October 7, 2023, between Israel and the Islamic movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip, according to German authorities. Some 27,000 people in Germany are considered Islamist extremists by the intelligence services. Berlin also expelled twenty-eight Afghan refugees at the end of August, all convicted of crimes committed in Germany, a first since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021. The government wants to do the same with Syria, a country to which expulsions are suspended due to the civil war in the country.
