A court in Germany remanded a young Syrian man on suspicion of murder and participation in a terrorist organization in connection with a knife attack in the town of Solingen that killed three people and wounded eight others during a festival that marked 650 the anniversary of the city.
A judge at the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe ordered 26-year-old Issa Al H. to be detained pending further investigations and possible charges after federal prosecutors said he supports the extremist group's radical ideology. Islamic State and that he was acting on the basis of this ideology when he repeatedly struck his victims in the head and upper body.
The decision came after the suspect surrendered, saying he was the perpetrator of the attacks, police said. He is also suspected of attempted murder and grievous bodily harm, prosecutors said. His last name was not published in accordance with German privacy rules.
The suspect was taken to the police station in Solingen on Sunday to appear before the court.
He “supports the ideology of the foreign terrorist organization Islamic State” and based on his “radical Islamic beliefs” decided “to kill at the festival as many people as possible who he considers infidels,” the federal prosecutor's office said via a statement.
The suspect is a Syrian citizen who had applied for asylum in Germany, police confirmed to the Associated Press news agency. German news agency DPA said without citing a specific source that his asylum request had been rejected and that he should have been deported last year.
On Saturday, the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, without providing evidence. The Islamic State group said in a post on its news site that the attacker was targeting Christians and that the perpetrator carried out the attacks on Friday evening “to avenge Muslims in Gaza and everywhere”.
The attack comes amid a debate over immigration ahead of September elections in Germany's Saxony and Thuringia regions, where anti-immigration parties are expected to score well. In June, Chancellor Olaf Scholz vowed the country would resume deporting criminals from Afghanistan and Syria after a knife attack by an Afghan immigrant left one police officer dead and four others injured.
Friday's attack sent shockwaves through Solingen. A town of about 160,000 near the larger cities of Cologne and Düsseldorf, Solingen was holding a festival to mark its anniversary.
The festival, which was supposed to continue until Sunday, was canceled. Instead of celebrations, residents gathered to mourn the dead and injured, placing flowers and notes near the scene of the attack.
