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24-02-2025
BERLIN: A 19-year-old Syrian man suspected of stabbing a Spanish tourist at Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial had planned for several weeks to kill Jewish people, Berlin police believe.
The attack took place on Friday evening, with the assailant approaching the 30-year-old victim from behind before stabbing him and fleeing the scene.
A man was arrested nearby after police noticed blood stains on his hands and clothing.
The suspect was carrying a prayer rug, a copy of the Quran, and the suspected weapon in his backpack, suggesting “a religious motivation”, police said.
After being taken to hospital with serious wounds to his neck, the victim underwent an operation and was put into an induced coma, but his life is no longer in danger.
Police say they are examining possible connections to the current Middle East conflict but said there is currently no evidence of links to any groups or individuals.
They are also investigating whether the suspect is suffering from mental illness. He had no prior criminal record and was not known to the police, they added.
Six people who witnessed the attack are receiving counselling from local authorities.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser described the attack as an “abhorrent and brutal crime” for which the suspect “must be punished with the full force of the law”.
“We will use all means to deport violent offenders back to Syria,” she said.
Several stabbing and car-ramming attacks have taken place in Germany in recent months, in the cities of Mannheim, Solingen, Magdeburg, Aschaffenburg and Munich.
All of the alleged attackers were migrants. Immigration has become a core issue for voters ahead of federal elections taking place on Sunday.
The Berlin Holocaust memorial was opened in 2005 to commemorate the six million Jews of Europe murdered by the Nazi regime, and comprises 2,711 stone slabs.
Hours after the attack in the German capital, Swedish police said they had apprehended three men near the Israeli Embassy in Stockholm, on suspicion of preparing to commit violent crime. It is not believed the incidents are linked.
On the other side, a political tidal wave is crashing across Germany. That’s what the hard-right nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party firmly believes.
It is labelled “radical”, “racist” and “anti-democratic” by opponents. Germany’s domestic intelligence service says the party is “anti-constitutional” but if polls are right, the AfD will become Germany’s second largest political force after elections this Sunday.
That would be a huge shift in tectonic plates, not just at home but across Europe.
Why is the AfD such a big deal, you might ask? Parties on the populist right have grown in support across much of Europe.
The AfD points to Donald Trump as well. They share his “anti-woke”, tough-on-migration, pro-fossil-fuel message. They too are keen to stop sending weapons to Ukraine, and to de-escalate tensions with Russia.
The Trump administration supports them right back publicly, to the outrage of many Germans.
The thing is, Germany isn’t just any other country.
It is Europe’s largest economy, one of its most influential nations. It still carries the weight of its Nazi past. Alongside the UK and France, it’s one of the Big Three that helped shape and secure Europe’s liberal order and defence structures following both World War Two and the Cold War.
Never before in post-war Germany has a hard-right party been so successful, while on the cusp of being identified as a threat to the Federal Republic and its liberal constitution. (Int’l News Desk)
