Berlin Holocaust Memorial stabbing suspect wanted to kill Jewish people, prosecutors say

Evidence so far suggests the attack was linked to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, according to investigators. The suspect in a stabbing at Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial two days before Germany’s election was a Syrian refugee who apparently wanted to kill Jews, according to prosecutors.

The 19-year-old was arrested almost three hours after the knife attack on a Spanish tourist. The victim, aged 30, sustained life-threatening injuries in the incident on Friday evening but survived, officials said. He underwent an emergency operation and was put into an artificial coma, however his life is no longer in danger.

Police and prosecutors said the suspect, who approached officers with blood on his hands and clothes, arrived in Germany in 2023 as an unaccompanied minor and successfully applied for asylum. He lives in Leipzig. Evidence so far suggests the attack was linked to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. He is believed to have chosen to mount the attack at the memorial after deciding to target Jewish people, prosecutors said.

They are working to establish if the suspect, who is under investigation on suspicion of attempted murder and bodily harm, suffers from any mental illness. They said he was not previously known to police or judicial authorities in Berlin. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser described the attack as "an abhorrent and brutal crime" and said that "we will use all the means at our disposal to deport violent criminals to Syria again.".

At the time of his arrest, he was carrying a backpack containing a prayer mat, a Quran, a sheet with verses from the Quran as well as Friday's date, and the knife allegedly used in the attack. An eyewitness told local broadcaster RBB24 that two men had appeared to approach each other before the victim was suddenly stabbed at around 6pm local time (5pm UK time).

Video of city centre, near the Brandenburg Gate, showed emergency vehicles and heavily armoured police lined along one side of the 1.9 hectare (4.7 acres) memorial site, which had been sealed off as investigators combed the scene. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, one of the German capital's most sacred sites, commemorates the six million Jews murdered by Adolf Hitler's Nazis during World War Two.

The stabbing came just two days before Germans vote in a national election on Sunday, with the campaign marred by a series of high-profile attacks. Polls suggest a far-right party could come in second place for the first time in nine decades. One of the recent attacks was a stabbing in which two were killed, including a toddler, which was blamed on an Afghan immigrant. That prompted a fraught debate on immigration and demands from the front-runner conservatives for the border to be closed.

In December, a Saudi man who had lived in Germany for years and whose posting history showed he sympathised with the far-right, rammed a Christmas market with a car, killing six, including a child, and injuring hundreds. Earlier on Friday, an 18-year-old Chechen was arrested on suspicion of planning an attack on the Israeli embassy in Berlin, Bild newspaper reported.

German news agency dpa, which cited unidentified security sources, said that the suspect was planning to leave Germany to join the Islamic State group. On Saturday, a suspicious object resembling explosives was found during a related search of an apartment in Potsdam and taken away to be defused elsewhere, police said.