Stabber shot by Dutch police was seeking Jewish and Christian victims

AMSTERDAM  — A Syrian asylum seeker shot by police officers in The Hague after stabbing three people was looking for Jewish or Christian victims, prosecutors said.

On Wednesday, prosecutors said the officers lawfully and justifiably discharged their weapons in the May 5 shooting of the man who has been identified in the Dutch media as Malek F., the De Telegraaf daily reported.

Detectives found that Malek F., 31, who was initially declared insane but then charged with a terrorist assault, was on the lookout for “Christian and Jewish kuffars,” the Arabic word for non-believer in Allah. He had said that kuffars were akin to “animals or retarded people,” the prosecution’s report quoted him as saying.

He was shot while stabbing people in the Schilderswijk, one of the most heavily Muslim neighborhoods in the Netherlands. One of his victims, whom he seriously injured, was Muslim.

Malek F. was moderately injured in the incident and faces three counts of attempted murder.

Two days earlier, Malek F. told detectives, he had brought a knife to a church in The Hague but left after no one opened the door when he knocked.