The German Prosecutor’s Office issues an arrest warrant against the attacker of the Islamophobic event in Mannheim

The police officer who stabbed him is in an induced coma and his condition is critical.

MANNHEIM (GERMANY), June 1 (DPA/EP) –

The German Prosecutor General’s Office reported today that an arrest warrant was issued against a 25-year-old man, accused of having stabbed several people during a public event of an organization critical of Islam.

The alleged aggressor was born in Afghanistan and has lived in Germany since 2014, according to information from the Karlsruhe prosecutor’s office, in charge of the fight against terrorism. He is married with two children and most recently lived in Heppenheim, in the south-west of the country.

The suspect is charged with attempted murder, the Baden-Württemberg state prosecutor’s office and police announced.

The man attacked six people with a knife on Friday morning at an event by the Islamophobic group Pax Europa in a central square in the city of Mannheim.

A police officer was seriously injured in the attempt to subdue him and his life is still in danger. According to a police spokesperson, the officer was placed in an induced coma. “He remains in critical condition,” he indicated.

The perpetrator of the attack had undergone surgery and was not yet in a position to be questioned, another spokesperson explained before specifying that all of the injured, apart from the agent, were participants in the demonstration.

Likewise, the authorities confirmed that on Friday night the apartment of the alleged aggressor was searched.

Despite the attack, the Pax Europa movement plans to continue its public events. Next Saturday, June 8, it will set up a stand in the center of Dortmund, Pax Europa treasurer Stefanie Kizina has announced.

Pax Europa board member Michael Stürzenberger, injured in Friday’s attack in Mannheim, “will certainly continue,” Kizina stressed. However, he said that he does not expect Stürzenberger to be able to rejoin next Saturday, as he was “seriously injured” and remains hospitalized.

The Pax Europa movement describes itself on its website as a “human rights organization” that educates people “about the nature and objectives of political Islam.” The organization does not distinguish between Islam and Islamism: it attributes to both, among other things, “aggressive contempt and intolerance.”

In its 2022 report, Bavaria’s domestic intelligence service wrote of Stürzenberger and the group’s Bavarian branch that there were “factual indications” that they were carrying out “Islamophobic efforts relevant to the protection of the Constitution,” “whose objective is to abolish the religious freedom of Muslims.”

Both Stürzenberger and the Pax Europa regional association in Bavaria continue to be monitored by the services.

Stürzenberger, a political scientist born in 1964, worked as a journalist for various media outlets and was long affiliated with the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), for which he worked as spokesperson.

The death of a CSU colleague in the bloody series of Mumbai terrorist attacks in November 2008, when Islamists attacked luxury hotels and a Jewish center, is considered a key experience in Stürzenberger’s political career.

Stürzenberger also made several appearances at events organized by the Islamophobic Pegida movement in Dresden, which emerged in protest of the massive arrival of immigrants starting in 2015. He also organized the Bavarian branch of Pegida for a time. In Munich, he and his followers campaigned against the construction of a mosque.