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Suspect in police custody after car runs down shoppers in German city of Trier

A 51-year-old man suspected of killing five people including a baby as his car tore through a busy shopping street in the German city of Trier has been remanded in police custody, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Published: 2 December 2020 17:11 CET
Suspect in police custody after car runs down shoppers in German city of Trier
Malu Dreyer (SPD), minister president of Rhineland-Palatinate, and the mayor of Trier, Wolfram Leibe (SPD), paid tribute to the victims on Wednesday. Photo: DPA

The prosecutors had said the suspect, who was under the influence of alcohol at the time of the incident on Tuesday afternoon, could be placed in psychiatric care.

But a judge ruled on Wednesday that he should be placed in custody, though no details were given of a possible motive.

The suspect, a native of the quaint city of Trier in Germany's Rhineland-Palatinate state, is accused of five counts of murder and 18 counts of attempted murder, the judge said.

READ ALSO: Baby among five killed as car runs down shoppers in German city of Trier

He is accused of tearing through the pedestrian zone in a silver SUV, killing five people including a nine-week-old baby and injuring 18 others, six of them seriously.

The victims also included three women aged 25, 52 and 73 and a 45-year-old man — the father of the baby who was killed.

The suspect was arrested at the scene and police were able to question him but said there were no indications of a religious or political motive.

Hundreds of people gathered on Wednesday morning around Trier's Porta Nigra Roman city gate to pay tribute to the victims, despite coronavirus restrictions.

“Let us maintain this solidarity that I am experiencing here, right now, in the weeks and months to come,” Trier mayor Wolfram Leibe said.

Rhineland-Palatinate state premier Malu Dreyer condemned the “terrible event here in this beautiful city”.

“Nothing, really nothing, can justify this brutal and terrible act,” she said.

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CRIME

Germany arrests Syrian man accused of plotting to kill soldiers

German authorities said Friday they had arrested a 27-year-old Syrian man who allegedly planned an Islamist attack on army soldiers using two machetes in Bavaria.

Published: 13 September 2024 11:17 CEST
Germany arrests Syrian man accused of plotting to kill soldiers

The suspect, an “alleged follower of a radical Islamic ideology”, was arrested on Thursday on charges of planning “a serious act of violence endangering the state”.

The man had acquired two heavy knives “around 40 centimetres (more than one foot) in length” in recent days, prosecutors in Munich said.

He planned to “attack Bundeswehr soldiers” in the city of Hof in northern Bavaria during their lunch break, aiming “to kill as many of them as possible”, prosecutors said.

“The accused wanted to attract attention and create a feeling of insecurity among the population,” they said.

German security services have been on high alert over the threat of Islamist attacks, in particular since the Gaza war erupted on October 7th with the Hamas attacks on Israel.

Police shot dead a man in Munich this month after he opened fire on officers in what was being treated as a suspected “terrorist attack” on the Israeli consulate in Munich.

The shootout fell on the anniversary of the kidnap and killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games by Palestinian militants.

The 18-year-old suspect had previously been investigated by authorities in his home country Austria on suspicion of links to terrorism but the case had been dropped.

The incident capped a string of attacks in Germany, which have stirred a sense of insecurity in Germany and fed a bitter debate of immigration.

Three people were killed last month in a suspected Islamist stabbing at a festival in the western city of Solingen.

READ ALSO: ‘Ban asylum seekers’ – How Germany is reacting to Solingen attack

The suspect in the attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State group, was a Syrian man who had been slated for deportation from Germany.

A federal interior ministry spokesman said if an Islamist motive was confirmed in the latest foiled attack, it would be “further evidence of the high threat posed by Islamist terrorism in Germany, which was recently demonstrated by the serious crimes in Mannheim and the attack in Solingen, but also by acts that were fortunately prevented by the timely intervention of the security authorities”.

The Solingen stabbing followed a knife attack in the city of Mannheim in May, which left a policeman dead, and which had also been linked to Islamism by officials.

Germany has responded to the attacks by taking steps to tighten immigration controls and knife laws.

READ ALSO: Debt, migration and the far-right – the big challenges facing Germany this autumn

The government has announced new checks along all of its borders and promised to speed up deportations of migrants who have no right to stay in Germany.

The number of people considered Islamist extremists in Germany fell slightly from 27,480 in 2022 to 27,200 last year, according to a report from the federal domestic intelligence agency.

But Interior Minister Nancy Faeser warned in August that “the threat posed by Islamist terrorism remains high”.

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