A shocking video has exploded across social media showing a man stabbing anti-Islam activist and politician, 59-year-old Michael Stürzenberger, during a campaign event in Mannheim.
The bloody and chaotic video shows the man running amok among campaign staff, who are wearing blue jackets, while the man stabs any victim in his sight. The campaign workers scramble to stop the man, who also stabbed a police officer in the neck.
News reports indicate that the suspect has already been shot and killed by police, although the suspect’s death has not been confirmed by all news outlets. In one frame of the video, the man can clearly be seen plunging his knife into the neck of a police officer.
Police say the victim was campaigning and providing “educational information” in the lead-up to the attack in the city square.
Stürzenberger is an anti-Islamic political activist who is a member of the Citizens’ Movement Pax Europa, who earlier served in the Munich Christian Socialist Union (CSU) and as the chairman of the Freedom party, a small party which is now dissolved. He publishes an anti-Islamic blog.
He is well known for producing a citizens’ petition against the construction of a mosque in Munich. He was convicted for “insulting an officer” and “denigration of religious teachings.”
He has also been under surveillance in the past, with the Bavarian State Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) listing Stürzenberger in its report related to “Islamophobia relevant to the Protection of the Constitution.”
The stabbing incident comes just one week before EU parliament elections.
