German authorities have arrested a 27-year-old Syrian man who was planning to attack soldiers at a barracks near the Bavarian town of Hof in southern Germany with two machetes. The man had acquired two machetes with 40-centimetre-long blades a few days ago, the Munich public prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
The man intended to “kill as many soldiers as possible,” the prosecutor said, adding that he planned to carry out his attack during the lunch break that some soldiers take at midday in restaurants in the town centre. Investigators believe that the man planned the attack because of his radical Islamist ideology. “The accused wanted to cause commotion and create a feeling of insecurity among the population,” the statement said.
The suspect was arrested on Thursday, but no further information was provided on the case until Friday. In response to questions from Morning Express, the public prosecutor added that the suspect first entered Germany on 17 October 2014 as a refugee and currently has a residence permit for subsidiary protection valid until December 2025. He has no criminal record and was not scheduled for deportation. The investigating judge ordered the defendant to be placed in preventive detention for “preparing a serious act constituting a danger to the State”.
Several attacks in recent weeks
Germany has seen several cases of knife attacks in recent weeks that are being investigated as jihadist terrorism and have sparked intense debate over the country’s immigration and asylum laws. The latest occurred last week, when a man tried to attack officers inside a police station in the western town of Linz am Rhein with a machete. They managed to subdue him without anyone being injured.
A few days earlier, Munich police shot dead a young Austrian armed with an old rifle who was planning to attack the Israeli consulate in the Bavarian capital on the anniversary of the 1972 Olympic massacre, when Palestinian terrorists murdered 11 Israeli athletes. The deceased, 18 years old and who, according to the media, was part of a well-integrated Bosnian family in the Salzburg area, had become radicalized on social media, specifically on TikTok.
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The turning point in German migration policy occurred in Solingen last month. A 26-year-old Syrian national allegedly killed three people with a knife during a festival in the western German town, an attack that was later claimed by the Islamic State terrorist organisation. The attack has shocked German society, which is demanding changes in the handling of asylum seekers.
Since the Solingen attack, just a week before a regional election won by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), the conservative opposition has increased pressure on Chancellor Olaf Scholz to adopt measures to speed up deportations and combat illegal immigration. The government, a coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals, presented a plan to combat illegal immigration in the Bundestag on Thursday. It includes more powers for the police to locate those who are to be deported, restrictions on services for asylum seekers, tougher gun laws and the promise of more deportations.
The Solingen jihadist should have been deported to Bulgaria, but the system failed. The ultras have tried to capitalise on the shock caused by the attack, presenting themselves as the only party that will fight resolutely against illegal migration, but the other parties, especially the Christian Democrats of the CDU, are adopting their discourse. The tripartite government has announced controls at all its borders from Monday 16, defying the regulations of the Schengen area. For the opposition, this is not enough. The leader of the CDU, Friedrich Merz, demands that Scholz systematically reject migrants at the borders, something that members of the government have ruled out because it is illegal.
