German police arrested late Saturday the suspect in the knife attack in Solingen, claimed by IS, which left three dead and eight wounded, according to North Rhine-Westphalia Interior Minister Herbert Reul.
German prosecutors are investigating the suspect on suspicion of committing a triple murder, multiple attempted murders and possible membership of the jihadist organisation. He will be transferred to Karlsruhe on Sunday to appear before a judge at the Federal Court of Justice, who will decide whether he will be placed in preventive detention.
According to police sources, the detainee is a 26-year-old man, identified as “Issa al H.”, of Syrian nationality, who surrendered to the security forces shortly before 11:00 p.m. on Saturday, with his clothes stained with blood, and who confessed his responsibility at the time of the arrest.
In an intervention on the German channel ARD, the minister has confirmed the arrest and indicated that “there is sufficient evidence” and that the authorship “is something more than an assumption” given that the security forces “have found evidence” in this regard. The detainee came from a refugee accommodation, where this Saturday the police operation had been carried out that concluded with the second of the three arrests made so far.
The detainee had been living in Germany since the end of 2022, where he requested asylum and was not previously known to the security authorities as an Islamist extremist.
Reul took the opportunity to praise the “very intense” work carried out by the German police throughout the day. “We are incredibly fast. I am very grateful. We may have been successful, we have to wait and see,” he said.
The minister admitted that he felt “at least a little relieved” with this latest arrest. “The fact that we, in these 24 hours, have managed, with luck, to catch the perpetrator, is perhaps the best proof that the State works,” he said.
