In the trial of attacks on Turkish shops in Waldkraiburg in Upper Bavaria (Mühldorf am Inn district), the defendant was sentenced to nine and a half years in prison – among other things for attempted murder in 26 cases, serious arson and the preparation of a serious act of violence that was dangerous to the state. The Munich Higher Regional Court also imposed placement in a forensic psychiatry.
The now 27-year-old Muharrem D. had admitted that he was responsible for the sensational series of attacks in Waldkraiburg 2020. Among other things, he set fire to a Turkish vegetable shop and put 26 people in the house in mortal danger. They could only save themselves by warnings from neighbors in the middle of the night.
D. also committed attacks on a hairdressing salon, a kebab stand, a pizzeria and the Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Waldkraiburg. Because the door wouldn’t open there, he threw his incendiary device into a paper garbage can right next to the Imam’s home, where the man slept with his family. Just because the flames went out, nothing worse happened. The prosecution interpreted this as an attempted murder of the family. The federal prosecutor had demanded thirteen and a half years in prison, the defense a prison sentence of seven years.
D.’s arrest on May 8, 2020 could have prevented further acts. When the police intervened, he had pipe bombs and kilos of explosives with him, which he had previously stored in his car in an underground car park in Garching an der Alz for a long time. In court, the defendant admitted that he had planned very different acts: attacks on several mosques of the Islamic Association Ditib, on the Turkish Consulate General in Munich and the Ditib Central Mosque in Cologne.
Court: Attacks are unthinkable without schizophrenia
D. had radicalized since 2017 “apparently out of nowhere”, as the prosecution put it. He listened to Salafist hate sermons on the Internet, became a supporter of the terrorist organization Islamic State and developed an incomprehensible hatred against Turks – even though his family itself comes from Turkey.
The accused is schizophrenic, according to the court. “Without the schizophrenia, the attacks carried out by the defendant in Waldkraiburg are unthinkable,” said the presiding judge. But they are “just as inconceivable without the Islamist-jihadist ideology”. This is “the foundation on which schizophrenia has saddled up”.