crime
Alleged stabber is silent to the magistrate
Candles and flowers in Brokstedt train station. in a waiting room. Two young people were killed and five injured in a knife attack. photo
© Daniel Bockwoldt/dpa
Three days after the fatal knife attack on a regional train in northern Germany, many questions remain unanswered. The alleged perpetrator makes no statements to the magistrate.
After the knife attack on a regional train near Brokstedt in Schleswig-Holstein, the alleged perpetrator made no statements on the matter at the magistrate’s appointment. There he was silent. After the results of the investigation are available, he will speak to his client, said lawyer Björn Seelbach on request on Saturday.
The 33-year-old stateless Palestinian was arrested on Wednesday after the knife attack as a suspect. Two people died in the act and five were seriously injured. An arrest warrant was issued for the man on two counts of murder and four counts of attempted manslaughter. The 33-year-old was released from custody just a few days before the crime.
The chairman of the working group on migration law in the German Lawyers’ Association (DAV), Thomas Oberhäuser, denied the question of whether the judiciary and administration could have prevented the crime on Deutschlandfunk on Saturday. He referred to legal considerations and requirements in pre-trial detention cases.
According to Oberhäuser, the judiciary and administration could have prevented the crime by continuing to hold him in custody. “But the judiciary decided that that would have been disproportionate to the crime he was accused of.”
Ibrahim A. had been in custody since January 2022 after stabbing a man in a homeless shelter. A district court sentenced him in August to one year and one week in prison for dangerous bodily harm and theft. A. had appealed against this. Shortly before the sentence expired, the arrest warrant was lifted on January 19, 2023.