Jihadist who stabbed four people on German train jailed for 14 years
Jihadist who stabbed four people on a German train is jailed for 14 years after court dismisses insanity plea and rules his Islamist views were to blame
- Abdalrahman A. was convicted of attempted murder and grievous bodily harm for the November 2021 assault
- Judge at the superior regional court in Munich identified a jihadist motive
- He said from May 2021 ‘at the latest’ Abdalrahman A. began envisioning ‘taking part in jihad, or armed combat’
A German court sentenced a Syrian-born man on Friday to 14 years in prison for an Islamist knife attack on a train in which he injured four passengers.
The superior regional court in Munich convicted the defendant identified only as Abdalrahman A., 28, of attempted murder and grievous bodily harm for the November 2021 assault.
Defence lawyers had argued their client, a Palestinian who grew up in Syrian refugee camps, suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and should be placed in psychiatric care.
But the presiding judge, Jochen Boesl, rejected a defence of mental illness on the basis of seven expert evaluations of the accused, and identified a jihadist motive.
Pictured: The defendant, front, stands together with his lawyers Martin Gelbricht, rear left, and Maximilian Baer, rear second left, in the courtroom in Munich on Friday, December 23
Boesl said the defendant had frequently listened to radio programmes ‘with Islamist content’ and from May 2021 ‘at the latest’ began envisioning ‘taking part in jihad, or armed combat’.
‘These views led him to this act,’ Boesl said of the sudden and unprovoked attack on a high-speed train between the Bavarian cities of Regensburg and Nuremberg.
‘He wanted to kill non-Muslim passengers because they were in his view non-believers and thus had no right to live.’
The stabbing took place near Neumarkt in the Upper Palatinate, and the train was stopped at Seubersdorf, southeast of Nuremberg
Islamist extremists have committed several violent attacks in Germany in the past several years, the deadliest being a truck rampage at a Berlin Christmas market in December 2016 that killed 12 people.
The Tunisian attacker, a failed asylum seeker, was a supporter of the Islamic State jihadist group.
More recently, a Syrian jihadist was given a life sentence in May 2021 for stabbing a German man to death and severely wounding his partner in a homophobic attack in the eastern city of Dresden.
Police and emergency services on the secene in Seubersdorf In Der Oberpfalz, between Regensburg and Nuremberg, on November 6, 2021
The number of people on the Islamist extremist spectrum in Germany fell to 28,290 in 2021 from 28,715 in 2020, according to a report from the BfV federal domestic intelligence agency.
However Interior Minister Nancy Faeser has said the ‘potential threat remains high’ from Islamist extremism.
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