by Stefano Piazza
Last night at around 6 p.m., a Spanish tourist was seriously injured by an assailant armed with a knife at the memorial dedicated to the Jews murdered in Europe, in the Mitte district of Berlin. As announced by the Berlin police on X, the seriously injured man was taken to hospital for treatment. The culprit was arrested during the night and is a Syrian citizen who recently arrived in Germany from Sweden. The Holocaust Memorial, designed by architect Peter Eisenman, was opened to the public in May 2005. The Field of Stelae and an underground information site in the capital, near the Brandenburg Gate, commemorate the approximately six million Jews murdered under the National Socialist regime.
This is the third attack in a few days; on February 14th, 24-year-old Afghan Farhad Noor, linked to ISIS, drove his car into a crowd, killing a young mother and her two-year-old daughter (as well as injuring 40 people), while two days later in Villach, about 350 kilometers south of Vienna, near the border with Italy and Slovenia, a Syrian asylum seeker, 23-year-old Ahmad G., attacked a crowd in the historic center. The result was tragic: a 14-year-old boy died, while four other people were injured, some seriously. The attack happened suddenly, just before 4:00 p.m., near the main square and the bridge over the Drava river. “It looked like a scene from a horror movie,” said one witness, “that man started to go wild, targeting a group of young people.” Two days ago, it was reported that on February 10th Austrian investigators arrested a 14-year-old who was planning an attack on the Vienna train station and found material suggesting he supported the Islamic State group.
The Ministry of the Interior said the boy, an Austrian of Turkish origin, was arrested in the capital on February 10 and had been radicalized online. The arrest was triggered by reports to Austrian intelligence that an IS supporter had posted stories and videos with Islamic extremist content on several TikTok profiles. The boy had a knife in his pocket at the time of his arrest and during a search of his home, investigators found numerous Islamic extremist books, as well as sketches of attacks with knives and machetes on a train station and against police officers, and drawings of fighters with the IS flag. The police also found handwritten instructions for making explosive material to be used as a detonator for a bomb. Further material that apparently was to be used to build a bomb was found in the basement of the building, together with other knives. The suspect refused to testify during questioning. The Brandenburg police have announced that they have arrested a young man suspected of organizing a serious politically motivated attack. He is an 18-year-old Russian national.
The arrest took place in the Dahme-Spreewald district. According to the German agency DPA, the young man’s target was the Israeli embassy in Berlin. Investigations are focusing on the Islamist track. Finally, as we write, we learn that one person has died and several others have been injured in a knife attack that took place on the afternoon of Saturday, February 22, at the Mulhouse market, the Mulhouse prosecutor’s office announced. According to Le Figaro, two parking attendants were seriously injured and three municipal police officers were run over. “The attacker, born in Algeria in 1987, is on the list of people at risk of terrorism,” said the prosecutor. According to initial information, he had been forced to leave the country after having committed several crimes and been convicted. During the attack he shouted ‘Allah akbar’. Just two weeks ago the Islamic State asked its followers on its channels to attack the “infidels” by any means possible, publishing a series of images showing men with knives with the words “Serial Killer”.
