Terrorial attack at city festival: “No departure recognizable”: maximum penalty for Solingen offenders

Relief over the maximum penalty, but anger on the behavior of the assassin: that he had repeatedly smiled during the verdict, makes it angry, says the surviving Lea Varoquier (26) from Solingen. In fact, Issa Al Hasan had even entered the hall with the thumbs that had been raised upwards.

The Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court imposed the highest sentence for the Islamist terrorist attack by Solingen. It spoke to the 27-year-old Issa Al Hasan for murder of three people, attempts to murder to ten people and as a member of the terrorist militia Islamic State.

The judges sentenced the Syrian to life in prison, found the special severity of his guilt and ordered the subsequent preventive detention.

The court thus corresponded to the claim of the federal prosecutor and all co -plaintiffs. The defenders had only spoken out against preventive detention and reserved an appeal against the judgment.

In addition, the court addressed the victims of pain and suffering between 30,000 and 120,000 euros, but admitted that the sums could not be realized.

Richter: The accused has radicalized since 2019

“The defendant has had massively radicalized Islamistically since 2019,” said judge Winfried van der Grinten. He himself spread IS propaganda on his Tikok profile. His internet activities can be seen how he continued to cope into Islamist ideology.

The 27-year-old lied several times, the judge attested to him. His statement that he had no longer endured the suffering of the people in Gaza was at most an accompanying motif. He had identified with the goals of IS.

He also described the attack as revenge for IS fighters who were killed in a retreat battle. “I swear, I will dismember you. I’ll tear you into pieces,” he announced in his videos. He selected the target. With the attack, IS again showed its inhuman face.

“Solidly stressful event” for the whole city of Solingen

With a tranchier knife with a blade length of 19 centimeters, he stabbed his victims until Robert K. stabbed him and resisted despite several injuries. Only then did the Syrian stop his attacks and fled.

The act was not only for the immediate victims, but for all concert goers and the whole city of Solingen, the judge said. An experienced paramedic was subsequently unable to work for a year.

Issa Al Hasan has a penchant for the most severe crimes. There are no signs of an inner departure. “However, he was not able to radicalize the people in Solingen,” said the judge. A year later, they would have celebrated a city festival again.

Three dead, eight injuries

On August 23, 2024, three people were killed at the knife attack at the Solingen city festival and eight were injured in some life. From behind, the Syrian had specifically stabbed the festival of visitors to the festival. He had just missed two people. It was caught 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.

The court came to his judgment after only 18 instead of the originally estimated 24 trial days. A psychiatrist had attested the defendant an intelligence quotient of 71, but saw no reason for reduced guilt. An IQ of 69 or lower is considered mental disability.

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 in 2016, which 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 had introduced himself to the psychiatric expert with the words: “I am Issa, I killed three people. You get 80 years. I am waiting for death.”

He initially called his deed as revenge for the massacre “the crusader” of Muslims in Bosnia, the Iraq and other countries, at another time it was the dead children in the Gaza Strip and the arms deliveries of Germany to Israel who would have driven him to act.

Actually, he wanted to throw a fire set on the Israeli embassy in Berlin, but then he had prepared the preparations for the city festival in Solingen.

The psychiatrist attested a high risk of relapse to the accused. There is a lack of empathy and a fascination for violence on the Islamist ideology.

Co-complaint representative Simon Rampp had 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.”

“Such people have no place on the street,” said a co-plague representative. In this case, the maximum penalty is “the least”.

An investigation committee of the NRW state parliament is currently examining why the deportation of Issa Al Hasan failed in the first reception center of Bulgaria. According to the federal prosecutor, an attempt is also made to determine the backers of the attack.