As with many other cases involving a migrant who reportedly killed his victims due to jihadist motives, a Somali man who murdered three women in Würzburg in a stabbing spree last year while screaming “Allahu Akbar” will end up receiving institutional mental health treatment rather than head to prison.
The trial against the Somali began in Bavaria on Friday, with the court hearing how Abdirahman J., who came to Germany in 2015, stabbed and killed three women aged 24, 49, and 82 years within just five minutes in the early evening of June 25, 2021. Equipped with a 30-centimeter-long blade, the Somali migrant severely injured four other women, including two girls between the ages of 11 and 16, and slightly injured three others.
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One of the murdered victims was a mother and school teacher defending her daughter from the Somali man. Covered in both her own blood and her mother’s, the 11-year-old girl was reported as screaming, “I don’t want to die,” as she ran through the Woolworth department store in the quiet German city.
The German prosecutor’s office is demanding institutional psychiatric treatment instead of prison for the 32-year-old Somali migrant, saying he is schizophrenic. The prosecution is seeking to send him to a “closed psychiatric ward” which would feature a higher level of security.
The man has a checkered past. Upon entering Germany, he reportedly lied about his age, reducing it by eight years. Although his asylum claim was rejected, he was never deported. At the time of the stabbing, he lived in a homeless shelter and had resided in Würzburg since 2015. Just before the attack, he had been hospitalized in a mental institution.
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“His mental state has been observed in recent months, including violent tendencies. A few days ago he was ordered to receive psychiatric treatment,” said Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Hermann at the time.
Herrmann originally said following the attack that there was “blatant suspicion” of an Islamist motive, however, Abdirahman J.’s defense has been successful in arguing he was simply mentally ill.
The perpetrator shouted “Allahu Akbar” at least twice during the attack and, according to investigators, acted out of hatred for Germany. However, his lawyer claimed there was no terrorist motive behind the stabbings, and investigators have been unable to uncover evidence that the Somali man belonged to any sort of radical Islamic organization such as ISIS.
Abdirahman J. did not comment on his action in court on Friday. However, his lawyer stressed that he regretted the suffering he had caused to the victims and survivors. According to his attorney, the “voices in his head” led him to attack.
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The prosecution wants the court to send the Somali migrant to a closed psychiatric ward for an extended period of time. According to a pair of psychiatric reports, he is mentally ill and could therefore pose a long-term danger to the public.
More than 50 knife attacks occur everyday in multicultural Germany, and the Somali migrant is not the only one currently on trial for a brutal stabbing. Another Somali man is in court for stabbing a man 111 times and slicing off his head. As Remix News previously reported, the German media routinely obscures the disproportionate role of migrants in such attacks.
The stabbing murder of three women in Würzburg also has much in common with a previous case in Germany from 2020, which received only cursory coverage at the time. In that case, 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
