Enlarge image
Crime scene in Würzburg
Photo: Karl-Josef Hildenbrand / dpa
The alleged assassin from Würzburg Abdirahman JA witnessed an apparently racist attack three years ago.
On September 1, 2018, thousands of right-wing extremists and angry citizens demonstrated in Chemnitz after a German was stabbed by an Iraqi in the city.
AfD politicians and activists from Pegida and the extreme right-wing Identitarian Movement were also involved in the protests.
Off the demo route, according to police reports, four masked people attacked an Afghan in the Markersdorf district that day.
In a video by the Funke media group, the person concerned described with a plaster on his face that he had been beaten.
On the picture, next to him, is a Somali who, according to SPIEGEL information, is Abdirahman JA.
He said he witnessed the assault.
They were attacked on the street near a gas station by people dressed in black and masked.
He ran away, which is why, unlike his friend, they did not catch him, the Somali told the Funke media group: "We are very afraid to live in Chemnitz." At the time, it was not clear whether the attackers came from the ranks of the right-wing demonstrators .
Nationwide debate about "huntings"
Riots in Chemnitz at the end of August and beginning of September 2018 had sparked a nationwide debate about whether there had been "hunted down hunts" by right-wing extremists against migrants in the city or not.
Abdirahman JA came to Germany in May 2015 and applied for asylum.
As a civil war refugee, he received so-called subsidiary protection.
At first he lived in Saxony until he moved to Würzburg in September 2019.
There he last lived in a shelter for the homeless.
Last Friday, the Somali is said to have stabbed three women in downtown Würzburg and seriously injured other people.
The investigators have evidence of an Islamist motive.
At the same time, the Munich Public Prosecutor's Office commissioned a psychiatric report to clarify the alleged bomber's culpability.
Abdirahman JA has been in psychiatric care several times in the past few months.
rol / stw / wow
