German prosecutors said Thursday that a Syrian suspected of belonging to the Islamic State (IS) group had been charged over a stabbing attack that killed three people.
The man, partially identified as Issa Al H., will face charges including three counts of murder, 10 of attempted murder, and membership of a foreign terrorist organisation.
The stabbing in August in the western city of Solingen was one of a string of attacks blamed on asylum seekers and migrants which inflamed Germany’s debate on migration in the months leading up to last week’s general election.
Prosecutors allege that Issa Al H. set out to harm “nonbelievers” at a street festival in Solingen on August 23 because “he saw them as representatives of Western society” and in order “to take revenge against them for the military actions of Western states”.
A member of IS whom Issa Al H. had contacted earlier that month is said to have encouraged him to commit the attack and promised him that the group would claim it and use it for propaganda purposes.
“A soldier” of the group had carried out the attack in “revenge” for Muslims “in Palestine and everywhere”, IS later said in a statement by its Amaq news agency on the Telegram messaging app.
Prosecutors say Issa Al H. filmed videos in which he pledged allegiance to IS and forwarded them on to his IS contact just before he committed the attack.
After his arrest, it transpired that Issa Al H., who was 26 years old at the time, had been slated for deportation but had evaded law enforcement.
The attack in Solingen was followed by several others which also shocked the country.
This month a car-ramming attack in Munich killed a two-year-old girl and her mother just 10 days before Germans went to the polls.
In that case a 24-year-old Afghan asylum seeker was arrested at the scene and police said he may have had Islamist extremist motives.
Last week a 19-year-old Syrian man was arrested after a Spanish tourist was stabbed and seriously wounded at Berlin’s Holocaust memorial.
The centre-right CDU/CSU, which demanded tough curbs on immigration in the wake of the attacks, came first in Sunday’s election with 28.5 percent of the vote.
The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) saw its share of the vote more than double to over 20 percent.
