Prosecutors said the suspect arrested in connection with the stabbing attack in the western German city of Solingen shared Islamic State ideology and acted on those beliefs during the attack.
Federal prosecutors identified the 26-year-old Syrian who turned himself in as Issa al-H., but their last name was withheld in accordance with German privacy laws.
A judge at the Federal Supreme Court in Karlsruhe ordered him detained on charges of murder and terrorist membership in connection with the knife attack on Friday at the city’s 650th anniversary festival, which left three people dead and eight wounded.
In a statement, the federal prosecutor’s office said the suspect, based on his “radical Islamic beliefs”, decided to “kill as many people he considered to be infidels as possible” at the festival.
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack on Saturday, without providing any evidence.
The suspect, handcuffed and shackled, made his first pretrial appearance at a police station in Solingen on Sunday. Police told The Associated Press that the suspect had applied for asylum in Germany.
The frenzied attack took place within a few minutes on Friday evening at a diversity festival in Solingen, a city of 160,000 people near Cologne and Düsseldorf, leaving three area residents dead – one woman and two men – and eight injured, four seriously.
The Associated Press, citing authorities, reported that a 15-year-old boy was arrested on suspicion of knowing about the planned attack but not reporting it to authorities, but that he was not the attacker. Two female witnesses told police they overheard the boy and an unidentified person discussing their intention to commit a bloody crime before the attack.
The attack has already sparked debate over Germany’s asylum policy ahead of regional elections in Saxony and Thuringia on September 1, where the far-right, anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany is expected to do well.
Friedrich Merz, leader of the centre-right opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said in a letter titled “Enough is Enough” and posted on his website that Germany should stop accepting further refugees from Syria and Afghanistan.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who is under pressure to address a rise in knife violence in urban areas, said on Saturday he was “shocked” by the “horrific incident” and mourned the victims along with the affected city.
The festival, which was due to run until Sunday and attract up to 25,000 people, has been cancelled, as have weekend celebrations in neighbouring towns.
Topic, a German DJ from Solingen, said in an Instagram post that he had been performing on stage when a security guard approached him to inform him that there had been an attack.
He said he was asked to keep playing “to avoid mass panic,” so “we carried on, even though it was extremely difficult.” He wrote that after 10 to 15 minutes he was asked to stop playing, and that “the gunman was still at large, so we hid in a nearby store as a police helicopter circled overhead.”
“I still can’t believe it… This was supposed to be a free festival for everyone. Some of my really close friends were there with their little kids,” he said in the video recorded in his childhood bedroom. “What’s going on in this world… My heart goes out to all of the victims.”
Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office says there have been around 10 Islamist attacks since 2000. One of the biggest was in 2016, when a Tunisian man rammed a truck into a Berlin Christmas market, killing 12 people and injuring dozens.
