San Francisco Frontiers - Syrian jailed for life over Islamist knife attack at German festival

Issa Al Hasan, 27, was a member of the Islamic State group and had acted out of "treacherous and base motives", the court in Duesseldorf found.

The knife attack took place on the opening night of a three-day "festival of diversity" in August 2024 that was part of 650th birthday festivities of the western city of Solingen.

Officials said after the attack that two men aged 56 and 67 and a 56-year-old woman were killed by being stabbed in the neck.

Hasan, who had been slated for deportation, initially got away but was arrested the following day at a hostel for asylum seekers not far from the scene.

It was one of a series of attacks attributed to migrants that pushed immigration to the top of the political agenda ahead of a general election in Germany in February this year.

Presiding judge Winfried van der Grinten told the court Hasan had acted "on the basis of his radical Islamic beliefs".

The defendant "endorsed the goals of IS" and wanted to "respond to the call of IS leaders to carry out attacks in Western Europe" because he rejected the Western "liberal way of life", the judge said.

- 'Revenge for fallen fighters' -

Hasan's goal was to "strengthen the impact of IS in Europe" and "take revenge for fallen IS fighters", van der Grinten said.

When prosecutors charged him in February, they said Hasan had been in contact with representatives of the Islamic State group ahead of the attack.

IS later said on the Telegram messaging app that "a soldier" of the group had carried out the attack to take "revenge" on behalf of Muslims "in Palestine and everywhere".

Hasan made a full confession during his trial, which was held under tight security in Duesseldorf.

In a statement read out by his lawyer, he voiced remorse for having "committed a grave crime" and said: "Three people died at my hands. I seriously injured others.

"Some of them survived only by luck. They could have died, too... I deserve and expect a life sentence."

But the court said on Wednesday the judges were "convinced that the defendant's radical Islamist attitude underlying the crime continues to exist".

It also found that Hasan had a "propensity to commit similar violent crimes" again and that there was an "associated danger to the general public".

- Heated migration debate -

Van der Grinten said Hasan had become familiar with IS ideology while still in Syria.

Starting around 2019, he had become "deeply radicalised by Islamist ideology" through the internet, even before his arrival in Germany in 2022.

Chats on his cell phone clearly showed this, the judge said.

The defendant had contacted IS via messenger services before the attack and suggested the city festival as a target, according to the court.

The Solingen rampage was one of a string of attacks that inflamed Germany's heated debate on migration.

The centre-right CDU/CSU alliance, which demanded tough curbs on immigration in the wake of the attacks, came first in the election, with more than 28 percent of the vote.

The biggest gains however were made by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, whose share of the vote more than doubled to over 20 percent.

W.Thompson--SFF