A German public prosecutor’s office refuses to blame any political or religious background in the case of the Iraqi accused of injuring five people with a knife on a regional train near Aachen on Friday.
The 31-year-old is registered as a “test case of Islamism,” however, the authorities believe that he acted due to a mental illness and have committed him to a psychiatric hospital — he will not be kept in custody for the time being.
As with many other alleged perpetrators, prosecutors in the German government consistently refuses to accept t in common with other Muslim immigrants who have recently committed severe crimes, the Junge Freiheit news outlet reported.
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The reason for the act on the train was allegedly a psychotic experience, the investigating authority has claimed, without naming it specifically. Had it not been for the intervention of a passenger and a police officer who happened to be on the train and disarmed the Iraqi man, more passengers would probably have been injured.
In 2015, the Iraqi suspect immigrated to Germany as part of a mass refugee wave. Upon arrival in Germany, he assumed a number of identities, which meant his nationality could not be clarified immediately after the recent crime. In the refugee home he originally stayed in, his radical Islamic views and the fact that he grew a long beard attracted attention, resulting in the operators of the residence to report their observations to the police, which resulted in the classification as an “Islamism test case” as early as 2017, the state Interior Minister Herbert Reul announced.
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Now, despite the man’s past inclusion on a terrorist watchlist, the man has now been classified as mentally disturbed, a move that could save the Shiite Muslim, who says he became a believer before his imprisonment. If it is confirmed that the man has psychological issues, the Iraqi could either be found innocent or found only partially guilty for his crime. The public prosecutor’s office announced that investigations were still being carried out on suspicion of dangerous bodily harm and attempted insidious murder in three cases.
More and more attackers labeled mentally ill
It is nothing new that investigators declare Muslim assassins who came to Germany when the border was opened by then Chancellor Angela Merkel to be mentally ill. The Somali who killed three women with a knife in Würzburg last year while screaming “Allahu akbar” was also deemed psychologically ill and will not have to serve any prison time. The same designation applied to the Arab knifeman who attacked several people on an ICE train near Nuremberg last November. An Iraqi ISIS supporter who ran over and killed motorcyclists on Berlin’s Autobahn in 2020 was also deemed psychologically ill despite making a number of pro-radical Islamic statements, screaming “Allahu akbar” after the murders, and getting out on a prayer mat on the highway.
In 2020, a Somali man randomly targeted an elderly pensioner, beating him into a coma while screaming “Allahu Akbar.” After nearly a year in hospital, the elderly man was forced to die alone after coronavirus restrictions kept his son from being able to visit him. Just as in Würzburg, the Somali migrant never had to face prison, but was instead ruled to be mentally incompetent
Germany’s left-wing government also has incentive to classify such murders as the result of a psychologically ill suspect rather than a case of Islamic extremism. For one, such cases fuel anti-immigrant sentiment at a time when the government plans to bring in more foreigners than ever. The country’s left-wing interior minister, Nancy Faeser, has also declared right-wing extremism to be the country’s biggest threat, and a series of Islamic terror attacks would complicate that assessment.
