It took more than three years for the Bavarian authorities to get through to this assessment: The assassination attempt at the Munich Olympia-Einkaufszentrum (OEZ) is classified as a right-wing motivated crime.
There had been a dispute over the classification of the crime between police, politicians and scientists for years. Now informed the competent state criminal investigation: The evaluation should not "neglected the right-wing and racist sentiments of the perpetrator".
On the evening of July 22, 2016, 18-year-old David Sonboly shot and killed nine people at a McDonald's branch at the OEZ. Almost all of his victims were young people with a migrant background.
During the deed, according to witnesses, he had called sentences like:
"It's your own fault, you bullied me!"
"I'm German, I was born here, because of the fucking Kanaken I do that!"
"I hate you Muslims!"
Despite the right-wing attitude of the shooter, the investigators had not yet classified the murders as politically motivated. They saw the assassination primarily as an act of revenge by a mentally ill young man who was massively bullied by classmates, to beatings. The criminologist Britta Bannenberg, who had prepared an opinion for the Bavarian LKA, came to a similar conclusion. For her, Sonboly was a "typical young Amoktäter" with a "generalized hatred of all".
Three experts, who were commissioned by the city of Munich, saw it differently and evaluated the act as politically motivated. The Jena extremism researcher Matthias Quent spoke of a "racist hate crime". Political scientist Florian Hartleb described the assassination as "lone-wolf terrorism": Sonboly wanted to take a role in the right-wing terrorist Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 people in Oslo and on the island of Utøya on July 22, 2011.
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In a report to the state parliament, the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior now explains why the State Criminal Police Office classified the OEZ assassination as politically motivated after more than three years - just as the SPD and the Greens had long ago demanded.
In the 16-page paper, the ministry makes it clear that the motives for Sonbolys deed are very complex: The school bullying and his mental illness had significantly contributed to the fact that he had become a murderer. In addition, the excessive playing of first-person shooters on the computer came: He had played 4348 hours alone in the counterstrike shooting game.
Fake profile on Facebook
However, there are also numerous indications of right-wing extremism, wrote the Ministry of the Interior. So Sonboly had set up a fake account on Facebook before his assassination, and invited as "Selina" Turkish and Balkan teenagers to eat at McDonald's at the OEZ - to lure them into a trap. In a two-page pamphlet he left after his death, he spoke of "foreign subhumans" and "cockroaches," which he would execute.
On the gaming platform Steam Sonboly was active in groups such as "Fuck Turkey" or the "Anti Refugee Club". In addition to Schulamokläufern he was very interested in the Norwegian right-wing terrorist Breivik: that Sonboly stepped on the fifth anniversary of the attacks in Norway to act, "does not seem to be accidental," says the report of the Ministry. Adolf Hitler also "admired" the assassin of Munich.
For Bavaria's Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) is clear: "Even if the investigations have brought a whole bunch of motives to light, the perpetrator had undoubtedly racist motives." In the official statistics, the OEZ assassination is now under the heading "politically motivated violent crime right" out.