FRANKFURT: A Syrian man who allegedly supports the Daesh group has been charged with attempted murder over the stabbing of a Spanish tourist at Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial, prosecutors said Tuesday.
The suspect, a refugee partially identified as Wassim Al M., is said to have seriously injured the 30-year-old man at the landmark in the German capital in February.
It was one of a series of attacks blamed on foreign nationals that fueled a bitter debate about immigration in the run-up to Germany’s general election.
The suspect “shares the ideology of the foreign terrorist organization Islamic State (IS)” and has “radical Islamist and antisemitic views,” federal prosecutors said in a statement.
He had traveled from the eastern city of Leipzig, where he had been living, to Berlin to target “alleged infidels, whom he regarded as representatives of a Western form of society that he rejected,” prosecutors said.
Shortly before the stabbing, the suspect, who was 19 at the time, sent a photo of himself to IS members so the group could claim responsibility for the attack, they said.
The tourist, from the Basque Country in northern Spain, was wounded in the neck during the attack at Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a somber grid of concrete steles located near the Brandenburg Gate and the US embassy.
The suspect, who was arrested shortly after the attack and is in pre-trial detention, has also been charged with causing serious bodily harm and attempted membership of a foreign terrorist organization.
Officials said previously he had arrived in Germany in 2023.
The attack was one of several which shocked Germany ahead of the general election, which saw a doubling in the vote-share for the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD).
The election was won by the center-right CDU/CSU, which has since taken power at the head of a coalition and moved swiftly to introduce stricter curbs on immigration.
The new government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz has signalled it is trying to resume deportations to Syria, which have been suspended since 2012.
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Syrian charged over Berlin Holocaust memorial stabbing
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Syrian charged over Berlin Holocaust memorial stabbing
- The suspect, who was arrested shortly after the attack and is in pre trial detention, has also been charged with causing serious bodily harm and attempted membership of a foreign terrorist organization
In South Africa’s affluent Western Cape, farmers lose cattle to drought
- Drought in country’s south follows flooding in north
- Farmers try to adapt but lose livestock
KNYSNA: In South Africa’s most visited and affluent province, Western Cape, one of the worst droughts in living memory is drying up dams, scorching grass and killing livestock, prompting the government to declare a national emergency this month.
Scientists say climate change is causing worsening droughts in the province, which draws tourists to its vineyards, beaches and the lush slopes of Table Mountain above Cape Town, but lies on the edge of the advancing semi-desert Karoo. In 2015, a drought almost dried up the taps in the city; farmers say this one has been even more brutal than a decade ago.
Over the weekend, mixed-race couple Christian and Ilze Pienaar were distributing feed to keep their hungry cattle alive. One cow had recently starved to death, its bones visible through its skin.
“The drought before wasn’t this bad because there was still ... grazing,” Ilze, 40, told Reuters. “Now there’s nothing, the dams are dry ... (and) we’re spending all our money on feed.”
She said she’d lost 16 cattle and 13 sheep since January alone.
The drought, which has also ravaged parts of Eastern Cape and Northern Cape, comes weeks after floods blamed on climate change and cyclical La Niña weather washed out the northeastern part of South Africa and killed 200 people across the region.
“The intensity and duration of both droughts and floods in this corner of the world is increasing,” Anton Cartwright, an economist with the African Center for Cities, said.
“Farmers (here) are very good at adapting to weather (but) ... the weather is just becoming much less predictable,” he said. “Seasons aren’t occurring, starting, ending at the same time of the year. It’s probably going to get worse.”
(Writing by Tim Cocks; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
Scientists say climate change is causing worsening droughts in the province, which draws tourists to its vineyards, beaches and the lush slopes of Table Mountain above Cape Town, but lies on the edge of the advancing semi-desert Karoo. In 2015, a drought almost dried up the taps in the city; farmers say this one has been even more brutal than a decade ago.
Over the weekend, mixed-race couple Christian and Ilze Pienaar were distributing feed to keep their hungry cattle alive. One cow had recently starved to death, its bones visible through its skin.
“The drought before wasn’t this bad because there was still ... grazing,” Ilze, 40, told Reuters. “Now there’s nothing, the dams are dry ... (and) we’re spending all our money on feed.”
She said she’d lost 16 cattle and 13 sheep since January alone.
The drought, which has also ravaged parts of Eastern Cape and Northern Cape, comes weeks after floods blamed on climate change and cyclical La Niña weather washed out the northeastern part of South Africa and killed 200 people across the region.
“The intensity and duration of both droughts and floods in this corner of the world is increasing,” Anton Cartwright, an economist with the African Center for Cities, said.
“Farmers (here) are very good at adapting to weather (but) ... the weather is just becoming much less predictable,” he said. “Seasons aren’t occurring, starting, ending at the same time of the year. It’s probably going to get worse.”
(Writing by Tim Cocks; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
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