A Syrian man arrested following a stabbing attack at Berlin's Holocaust Memorial, which injured a Spanish man, had been planning to "kill Jews," police and prosecutors said on Saturday, according to the AFP news agency.
The 19-year-old suspect, detained on Friday with bloodstains on his hands, was carrying a copy of the Quran and a prayer rug. Initial investigations suggested "connections with the Middle East conflict," authorities reported.
According to investigators, the attacker approached the 30-year-old Spanish man from behind at around 6:00 p.m. local time on Friday and stabbed him in the neck with a knife.
The attack took place at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a solemn site consisting of concrete steles located near Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate and the US Embassy.
The victim suffered life-threatening neck injuries and was placed in an artificial coma, but his condition was no longer critical.
Police stated that the Syrian suspect arrived in Germany in 2023 as an unaccompanied minor. He was granted asylum and had been living in Leipzig, in eastern Germany.
Authorities found no evidence linking him to other individuals or groups, and he had not previously come to the attention of Berlin police.
Germany has been on high alert for possible Islamist attacks for several years and especially since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7 of last year.
The country has seen a series of violent attacks in recent weeks.
Last week, a driver crashed a car into a labor union demonstration in central Munich on Thursday, injuring 30 people, two of whom later died of their injuries.
Several weeks before that, a knife attack in Aschaffenburg left a two-year-old boy and a man dead. The suspect in that case was an Afghan whose asylum request had been rejected, escalating migration debates in Germany’s election campaign.
Other recent attacks include knife incidents in Mannheim and Solingen last year, both involving Afghan and Syrian immigrants. In the latter case, the attacker was a rejected asylum-seeker who was supposed to leave the country.
Additionally, in December, a Saudi doctor carried out a car ramming at a Christmas market in Magdeburg, after having drawn attention from local authorities.