The suspect in a Friday stabbing at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin had antisemitic motives, Berlin police said on Saturday.
Authorities earlier identified the suspect as a 19-year-old Syrian refugee, saying he was under investigation on suspicion of attempted murder and bodily harm.
“According to what we know so far, especially based on statements made by the accused to the police, he has been planning to kill Jews for several weeks,” police said.
What else do we know about the Berlin stabbing?
A 30-year-old Spanish tourist was seriously injured in the knife attack on Friday evening at the site of Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial.
Investigators say the suspect attacked the tourist from behind at about 6 p.m. local time (1700 UTC) on Friday, stabbing him in the neck with a knife.
The victim of the stabbing was placed in an artificial coma but is no longer in critical condition, police said.
Police said the suspect came to Germany in 2023 as an unaccompanied minor. He was granted asylum and lived in the city of Leipzig in the eastern state of Saxony, investigators said.
Investigators said the suspect was not previously known to law enforcement.
The stabbing occurred two days ahead of a February 23 election in which migration and security have been major campaign topics.
Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial
Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe commemorates the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and was designed by the architects Peter Eisenman and Buro Happold.
The structure is made up of nearly 3,000 stone blocks and lies in the center of the German capital, next to the Brandenburg Gate. It is regularly visited by tourists.
A report by the RIAS antisemitism monitoring group said in November that antisemitic incidents rose sharply in Berlin after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and the ensuing Israeli military offensive in Gaza.
On Thursday, Berlin police arrested an 18-year-old Russian national accused of planning to attack the Israeli embassy in the German capital.
Edited by: Darko Janjevic
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