Bavaria
Knife attack in ICE: Investigations can take weeks
Three people were seriously injured in the knife attack on the ICE Passau-Hamburg. Photo: Daniel Karmann / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
After the bloody act in an ICE, the alleged perpetrator is first in psychiatry. An appraiser considers him incompetent. For the investigators, however, the work is only just beginning.
Two seriously injured victims of the knife attack in the ICE Passau-Hamburg are still in the hospital, the confessed suspect is now being housed in a psychiatric clinic in Regensburg.
The investigation into the background of the bloody crime on Saturday could take weeks, maybe even months, according to the police.
According to the investigation, the 27-year-old Syrian stabbed four men between the ages of 26 and 60 on the ICE shortly after Regensburg. Islamist or terrorist motives are not recognizable, say the investigators on Sunday at a press conference in Neumarkt in the Upper Palatinate. At least there is no evidence so far. There were searches at the home of the accused in Passau and among relatives and friends in Thuringia and the Ruhr area.
Perpetrator possibly incapable of guilt
The Chief Public Prosecutor Gerhard Neuhof said an expert assumes that the man is suffering from “paranoid schizophrenia” and has delusions. At the time of the crime, he would therefore not have been guilty of guilt. At the request of the public prosecutor’s office, the judge therefore ordered him to be placed in a district hospital.
The investigators accuse the 27-year-old of attempted murder in two cases, attempted manslaughter and willful assault. The man has lived in Lower Bavaria since arriving in 2014 and was recognized as a refugee in 2016.