Hamburg stabbing suspect known as radical, mentally unstable

A judge issued a formal arrest warrant Saturday that keeps the suspect in custody pending possible charges of murder and five counts of attempted murder, Hamburg prosecutors’ spokeswoman Nana Frombach told the dpa news agency.

She said officials next week will consider whether federal prosecutors, who handle terrorism cases in Germany, should take over the case.

Police said the suspect grabbed a kitchen knife with a 20-centimetre (nearly 8-inch) blade from a supermarket shelf on Friday afternoon and stabbed three men, one of them fatally. He then left the supermarket and hurt another three people outside, not all of them with the knife. Passers-by then pursued and overwhelmed him and he was arrested by police.

An additional person was slightly hurt when she fell in the tumult, police said.

Grote said none of the wounded was being treated for life-threatening injuries Saturday, although some were seriously hurt. He and Hamburg Mayor Olaf Scholz toured the site of the attack, talked to witnesses and met with one of the hospitalized victims.

The suspect arrived in Germany in March 2015 after stops in Spain, Sweden and Norway. His asylum request was rejected late last year and authorities were trying to secure new Palestinian papers to deport him — a process in which they said he had co-operated.

Officials said he was on their radar as a suspected Islamic radical but not as a “jihadist.”

A friend had tipped authorities off to changes in the man, telling them that he stopped drinking alcohol and started talking about the Qur’an, said Torsten Voss, head of the Hamburg branch of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency.

Officials interviewed the man and came away with the impression he was a “destabilized personality” but not an immediate danger, Voss said.

“We evaluated him rather as someone who was psychologically unstable than had clear Islamic extremist motivations,” Voss said at a news conference.

A search of the man’s room at an asylum-seekers’ centre turned up no weapons.

The suspect hasn’t yet talked about Friday’s attack, prosecutor Joerg Froehlich said, although he has indicated that he acted alone.

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Associated Press reporter George Jahn contributed from Vienna

Geir Moulson, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

Hamburg stabbing suspect known as radical, mentally unstable

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