Start of the city festival: judgment in the process of Soling terrorist attack expected

A year after the terrorist attack by Solingen, the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court today wants to announce the judgment against the confessed assassin.

The 27-year-old Issa Al Hasan threatens the highest sentence because of triple murder, ten times attempted murder and as a member of the terrorist militia Islamic State: lifelong imprisonment with special severity of guilt and subsequent preventive detention.

The federal prosecutor and all co -plaintiffs have applied for this. The defenders had only spoken out against preventive detention.

Three dead, eight injuries

On August 23, 2024, three people were killed and eight injured at the knife attack at the Solingen city festival. From behind, the Syrian had specifically stabbed the festival of visitors to the festival. He was arrested a day later.

The attack had triggered a debate about refugee and asylum policy nationwide. In North Rhine-Westphalia, a security package with dozens of measures was subsequently decided.

Issa Al Hasan had already confessed to the knife attack at the beginning of the trial. Solingen’s attack was the first in Germany since the attack on the Berlin Christmas market 2016, to which the terrorist militia IS had known.

Before the attack, the rejected asylum seeker had taken up a confessional video and put the faithful in the IS caliph. He introduced himself to the psychiatric expert with the words: “I am Issa, I killed three people. You get 80 years. I’m waiting for your death.”

He initially described his act as revenge for the massacre “The Crusader” of Muslims in Bosnia, the Iraq and other countries, another time he stated that the dead children were in the Gaza strip and the arms deliveries of Germany to Israel who had driven him to act.

The Federal Prosecutor’s Office described him as jihadists and Islamists who had radicalized since 2019. He pressed that the IS complains about the attack, as it happened.

The psychiatrist has attested the accused a high risk of relapse. Despite an intelligence quotient of only 71, there is no evidence of reduced guilt.

There is a lack of empathy and a fascination for violence on the Islamist ideology. The court then indicated that ISSA al Hasan also comes into consideration.

Co-complaint representative Simon Rampp said that the accused had peacefully celebrated visitors to the “Festival of Diversity” in the dark and from behind with a knife. “There is no more insult.” The defendant’s version of having suffered from a delusions during the crime is a clumsy protection claim.