A German police have arrested a suspect in the stabbing death of three people at a music festival in the western city of Solingen on Friday, an attack that sent shockwaves across the country.
The man turned himself in to authorities and has since confessed to the crime, local police said.
The suspect was arrested at a refugee reception centre following a massive manhunt that has seen authorities launch “extensive search measures” across the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and deploy special forces. Police had previously arrested a 15-year-old boy in connection with the incident but said he was not the alleged attacker.
An anonymous security source told Amaq, the IS propaganda agency, that “The perpetrator of Friday’s attack on a gathering of Christians in the city of Solingen, Germany, is an Islamic State fighter.”
According to the statement released on the digital platform Telegram, the informant said that the author carried out the attack “as revenge for Muslims in Palestine and elsewhere”, without providing further details.
The prosecutor responsible for combating terrorism in the North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) region, Markus Caspers, said at a press conference on Saturday that, as police had indicated throughout the day, it could not be ruled out that the attack, which took place at an open-air party during the celebrations of the 650th anniversary of the founding of Solingen, was an act of terrorism.
“There is no other apparent motive. The victims were unknown, unrelated. That’s why we think it’s possible that it was an act of terrorism,” he said.
The director of the police operation supported this hypothesis by confirming, in response to questions from the press, that, According to images of the attack, the stab wounds were aimed “with great precision” at the victims’ necks.
Police found several knives but could not confirm whether any of them had been used as a weapon by the perpetrator during the attack.
Police officials also made public the ages of the fatal victims, two men aged 56 and 67 and a woman aged 56, and the condition of the injured, four of whom are in critical condition, two in serious condition and two with minor injuries.
The police also reported the arrest in Solingen of a suspect involved in the case: a 15-year-old teenager who allegedly had prior knowledge of the attack that shocked Germany and did nothing to prevent it.
The young man, who was arrested at the family home, was identified based on the testimony of two people who heard a suspicious conversation before the events during the festival and who, after the attack, contacted the police.
Later that night, German police announced a second arrest in connection with the attack.
“We followed a tip-off and that’s why there was a special forces operation,” a police spokesman said at the time, after the press reported that searches were underway at a refugee reception center in the center of Solingen.
Read Also: Borrell condemns attacks and calls for combating “all forms of hatred”
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Source: https://www.noticiasaominuto.com/mundo/2620686/quem-e-o-suspeito-do-ataque-na-alemanha-tem-26-anos-e-confessou
