Afghan man charged in Germany for killing police officer in Islamist knife attack
Prosecutors say man who attacked anti-Islam rally in western city of Mannheim in May harbors ‘sympathy’ for ISIS and ‘shares its ideology’
BERLIN, Germany — An Afghan man has been charged with killing a police officer and wounding several others in an Islamist-inspired knife attack earlier this year that shocked Germany, prosecutors said Wednesday.
The attack in the western city of Mannheim in late May took place just before the scheduled start of a rally organized by Pax Europa, a campaign group against radical Islam.
The suspect, named as Sulaiman A., harbors “sympathy” for the Islamic State group and “shares its ideology,” federal prosecutors said in a statement.
He showed up at the city’s market square armed with a large hunting knife and intended to carry out an attack on those he considered “infidels” or unbelievers, they said. He “pounced on a police officer who had rushed to the scene and stabbed him forcefully and deliberately in the head and upper body,” the statement said.
The officer died as a result of his severe injuries. The other victims also suffered injuries, some of them potentially life-threatening, the prosecutors said.
At the time of the attack, Der Spiegel magazine reported that Sulaiman A. was a 25-year-old who was born in Herat, Afghanistan, and lived in Hesse state.
The stabbing revived debate in Germany about deporting serious criminals even if they come from countries deemed unsafe, including Afghanistan and Syria.
In August, Germany carried out its first deportation of Afghans convicted of criminal offenses to their home country since the Taliban took power in August 2021.
Since the Hamas attack on Israel of October 7, 2023, which sparked Israel’s war against the terror group in Gaza, German security services have been on heightened alert for Islamist threats.
Three people were killed and eight wounded in a knife attack at a street festival in the western city of Solingen in August, allegedly carried out by a Syrian asylum seeker and claimed by the Islamic State group.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
