crime
Minister sees “feeling of fear” after train attack
Schleswig-Holstein’s Education Minister Karin Prien visits the school in Neumünster where the victims of the knife attack went. photo
© Daniel Bockwoldt/dpa/Daniel Bockwoldt
The knife attack on the regional train from Kiel to Hamburg left deep scars on many people. Karin Prien tries to talk to the teachers and classmates of the two young people who were killed.
“A general feeling of fear and insecurity” – that’s what Schleswig-Holstein’s Education Minister Karin Prien sees after Brokstedt’s knife attack. The CDU politician spoke to teachers and students on Friday morning in the commercial school in the city of Neumünster, which the two victims had attended.
“I came here today primarily to express that we are mourning together with the students, the teachers, the social workers, the school psychologists. The whole country is mourning,” said the CDU politician after the Conversations.
Karin Prien on a good school community
She was able to convince herself that there was a very good crisis intervention team at the school. According to Prien, the entire school community, the entire staff, is working on the crime together with the class in which the killed student went and the class of the boy who was killed. “But of course the other students are also affected by the fact that such a crime could have happened on a railway line that they use every day.” There is a lot to do.
“But I experienced a school community here today that stands together and tries together to deal with such an incredible event,” said Prien. Later in the state parliament, she added: “There is a general feeling of fear and insecurity, and I think we will have to deal with that far beyond this individual school in the coming weeks and months.”
The 17-year-old and the 19-year-old, who were killed in the attack on a train from Kiel to Hamburg on Wednesday, knew each other. For the afternoon, a prayer service for the victims was prepared in the church of the Brokstedt Evangelical Lutheran congregation, as the Altholstein church district announced. Visitors could then light candles. Thanks should also be given to the rescue workers.
19-year-old was a trainee at the railway
The stabbed 19-year-old worked as a trainee in vehicle maintenance at Deutsche Bahn in Neumünster, as the branch manager of the railway and transport union North said. In a post on their Facebook page, the union mourned the loss of their member.
Five other travelers were injured in the knife attack, some seriously. The attacker was arrested by the police at Brokstedt train station after other passengers overpowered him. The 33-year-old suspect Ibrahim A. was released just a few days ago by order of the Hamburg Regional Court from the Billwerder prison, where he was in custody for a violent crime.
After the fact, there are still unanswered questions about how the authorities will deal with the suspect, who previously committed a crime and is in custody. The question is whether the bloody deed committed by the 33-year-old stateless Palestinian could have been prevented, said Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) on Thursday evening in Brokstedt.
According to the authorities, the man had repeatedly committed violent crimes since entering Germany in 2014. A subsidiary protection status prevented his deportation.
No evidence of a terrorist background
“How could it happen that he was no longer in a prison despite so many previous convictions?” asked Faeser, who had come to Brokstedt with Schleswig-Holstein’s Prime Minister Daniel Günther (CDU). Now it has to be clarified how it could happen “that he was released from custody so early,” said Faeser, and “why people who are so violent are still here in Germany”.
According to the Itzehoe public prosecutor’s office, there is no evidence of a terrorist background to the crime. According to Schleswig-Holstein’s interior minister, Sabine Sütterlin-Waack (CDU), the man’s interrogation has not yielded any results so far, so nothing can be said about his motives. She therefore warned against too hasty political demands.
The SPD and FDP factions in the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia requested a special session of the legal committee. They emphasize that the suspect is said to be “a multiple offender known to the judiciary” who in the past “is said to have already become conspicuous to a considerable extent, especially in North Rhine-Westphalia”.