An 18-year-old Austrian man was shot dead in the centre of the Bavarian capital on Thursday 5 September, the anniversary of the hostage-taking at the Munich Olympics.
Shootings in Munich, near a documentation center on the history of Nazism and the Israeli consulate, on the anniversary of the attack on the 1972 Olympic Games. Munich police announced that they had shot dead this Thursday, September 5, in the morning on a “suspicious person” in the Karolinenplatz area, which is home to both buildings.
Man killed by police wanted “probably” commit “an attack” against the diplomatic site, the regional interior minister of Bavaria said early this afternoon. The police specified that the suspect was an 18-year-old Austrian. This young man from Salzburg is “suspected of religious radicalization and interest in explosives”. He was “already known to the police since February 2023”after being accused in particular “of participation in a terrorist group”and was subject to a firearms ban. But the investigation was closed in April 2023. According to the German weekly Der Spiegel and the daily Bild, investigators had at the time discovered propaganda for the Islamic State (IS) organization on his mobile phone.
“The rapid reaction of the police in Munich today probably prevented terrible things.”wrote German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on X, late in the day, adding that “Anti-Semitism and Islamism had no place among us.”
Police presence increased around city’s main synagogue
Law enforcement said they saw during an intervention “a person appearing to be carrying a firearm” and shot him. “Currently, there are no indications that there are other suspicious persons, within the framework of the police intervention”they said. Journalist Ronen Steinke, from the German daily South German Timesposted a video on X in which a large number of gunshots can be heard.
They come on the anniversary of the September 5 hostage-taking at the 1972 Munich Games, targeting Israeli athletes who were murdered by members of the Palestinian organization Black September.
After the shooting, police have significantly increased protection at the Ohel-Jakob Synagogue, the main Jewish place of worship in Munich. Patrol cars are parked at the entrance gates and officers armed with machine guns surround the building to protect it, the South German TimesHelicopters were also circling around downtown Munich this morning.
Asked by AFP, the Nazi Documentation Center confirmed by email that a police intervention was taking place, but declined to comment further. Built in 2015, the center is located in the former “Brown House,” the headquarters of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), better known by its abbreviation Nazi Party.
On its website, the center states: “to look critically at the history of this place and the historical significance of Munich as the former ‘capital of movement'”Germany, like many countries around the world, has seen a resurgence of anti-Semitism since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, which sparked the war in Gaza.
Update : at 2:29 p.m., with the addition of the Bavarian regional interior minister and the police on the identity of the suspect shot dead; at 6:25 p.m. with statements by Olaf Scholz; at 8:30 p.m. with details on the radicalization of the attacker.
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