Munich’s chief public prosecutor, Gabriele Tilmann, has warned against automatically inferring religious motives when violent offenders shout the Islamic phrase “Allahu Akbar,” the Junge Freiheit news outlet has reported.
In her remarks during an interview with der Spiegel magazine, Tilmann referenced the fatal knife attack in Würzburg, which occurred in June 2021, where a 24-year-old Somali man killed three women aged 82, 49, and 24, in a local department store. Several other women and a 16-year-old were injured, some seriously, while another man escaped with minor injuries.
Experts then concluded that the perpetrator was mentally ill, and the attacker was transferred to a psychiatric clinic.
“During the attack, the man shouted ‘Allahu Akbar,’ but even that does not necessarily indicate an Islamist background,” the prosecutor told the German publication.
According to Tilman, as a matter of principle, prosecutors should not pigeonhole people. A mentally ill perpetrator can seek support from an extremist ideology, said Tilmann, who serves as the chief of the Bavarian Central Office for Combating Extremism and Terrorism.
She declared that this does not apply to right-wing extremists, who are more driven by their ideology, and stressed that they were often young men without any solid social ties.
