Knife attack at city festival: Attack in Solingen: Fear – and the question of the motive

Why? Many of the grieving people in Solingen are still trying to understand the incomprehensible. The suspected perpetrator was arrested and the people of the city can at least breathe a little easier after the knife attack that left three people dead and eight injured. But why did the suspected perpetrator apparently randomly attack people celebrating at a peaceful and happy city festival?

Quiet music floats over Solingen’s Neumarkt on Saturday evening. Hundreds of people with depressed faces gather in the pedestrian zone. Many hold candles in their hands, have brought flowers, stand close together and listen to the words of the church representatives. “The city is different today than it was yesterday,” says city dean Michael Mohr. “Finding words is almost impossible – gestures don’t show.”

Solingen, a city sandwiched between Düsseldorf, Cologne and Wuppertal, has 160,000 inhabitants. Many of them are struggling to come to terms with what has happened. And it is safe to say that many people in the rest of the country are struggling with this too.

The bloodshed took place on Friday evening at the celebration of the 650th anniversary of the city’s founding, the “Festival of Diversity”. NRW Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) arrived on the same night as the crime. Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) demanded a harsh punishment for the perpetrator.

Top politicians from the federal and state governments will meet with Solingen’s mayor Tim Kurzbach (SPD) in the town hall on Saturday, including Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD), North Rhine-Westphalia’s Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU) and Interior Minister Reul. They expressed their horror and dismay and thanked the emergency services. Wüst wants to send a message: “Our country is not wavering. We will not allow ourselves to be shaken by terror, but we will defend our way of life.”

Faeser calls the attack “disgusting” and also assures: “In times like these, we will not allow ourselves to be divided, but will stand together and will not allow such a terrible attack to divide society.”

The police have not yet given any information about the man’s motive. The public prosecutor’s office spoke of “initial suspicion of a terrorist-motivated act”. The reason for this is, however, that another motive is simply not apparent at this point.

According to “Spiegel”, the suspected perpetrator is a 26-year-old asylum seeker from the civil war-torn country of Syria. He has therefore not been in Germany for two years. The information about him was confirmed to the German Press Agency.

Terrorist militia Islamic State claims responsibility for attack

On Saturday evening, the terrorist group Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for the deadly knife attack. But whether the letter of confession received by the Düsseldorf police is genuine has yet to be verified. It is also still completely unclear whether the suspected attacker actually had any links to the Sunni terrorist organization. In the past, IS has also claimed responsibility for acts where a connection to the organization could not be proven.

Two men aged 67 and 56 and a woman aged 56 were killed in the attack. After the attack, the attacker apparently fled in the tumult. A 15-year-old was later arrested, but not on suspicion of a specific crime – rather, he may have spoken to the attacker before the attack. The perpetrator himself initially remains a phantom, which makes the situation very vague. There is no wanted photo. There was no police video surveillance at the crime scene.

Fear is spreading

The fear is palpable among the people who laid flowers the day after the crime. “I said to my husband: we can’t go where there are a lot of people anymore,” says an elderly woman who has lived in a house right next to the crime scene for decades. Suddenly you have a knife in your back. “You have to be afraid,” she says.

Another resident says resignedly. “Solingen is in the headlines a lot at the moment.” This sentence is heard remarkably often in the city. In March, four people died in an attic apartment in the city in a fire that was allegedly started by a former tenant. In June, a man dropped a bottle containing a substance in front of a Solingen shop, causing an explosion and fatal injuries. There is suspicion that the case has a connection to the machinations of the so-called Dutch Mocro Mafia, which has been discussed in NRW for weeks.

But Solingen is not the only place that will have to deal with the latest events somehow; it is also fueling political debates in Germany. Knife attacks have increased, and Federal Minister of the Interior Faeser recently announced stricter gun laws, but this did not calm the debate for long. And in a week there will be state elections in Saxony and Thuringia.

Solingen’s mayor Kurzbach is still visibly shaken the day after the attack: “Even though it has been so many hours now, I still find it difficult to find the right words,” he said in front of the visiting top politicians from federal and state governments. The more he spoke to relatives who had suffered injuries or even deaths and to people who had seen the attack, the more horrific the events seemed to him. “It really gets under your skin.”