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Police vehicle in Stolberg in North Rhine-Westphalia
Photo:
David Young / dpa
After a suspected Islamist-motivated knife attack in Stolberg, North Rhine-Westphalia, an arrest warrant was issued against the 21-year-old suspect on the urgent suspicion of dangerous bodily harm.
This was announced by a spokesman for the Düsseldorf Public Prosecutor's Office at the request of the dpa news agency.
Accordingly, the man was arrested because of the risk of repetition because he attacked a person with a knife and shouted "Allahu akbar" (God is great).
Further details were initially not known.
The alleged perpetrator had opened the car door of a 23-year-old on Sunday night at 0.40 a.m.
Then he stabbed him with a knife.
Before or during the crime, the accused shouted "Allahu akbar" according to investigators.
According to the police, the victim was seriously injured in the arm and had to undergo an operation.
The state security led the suspect as an Islamist test case
The suspect was previously considered an Islamist test case by the state security and was upgraded to the category of dangerous after the fact.
The public prosecutor's office sees a possible connection between the act and the local elections in North Rhine-Westphalia.
The father of the seriously injured 23-year-old was seen on an AfD advertising motif, said the spokesman for the investigative authority, whose central office for terrorism prosecution took over the proceedings on Monday.
On the motif of the AfD Stolberg, four men and the local AfD chairman Hans Wolf could be seen on Facebook.
There was also the slogan "German Turks want change".
According to investigators, the father - a Turkish national - testified that he had not given consent to the canvassing.
The Stolberg AfD spokesman Hans Wolf, who is also shown in the photo, told SPIEGEL that he had asked the men for permission to publish the picture on Facebook.
He also identified himself as an AfD politician, said Wolf.
Under the Facebook post there were "comments against and for", but no threats against the men pictured.
"I do not know whether that caused this attack to take place," said Wolf.
The supervisor of the Stolberg AfD's Facebook page told SPIEGEL that the photo had since been deleted.
The Cologne police confirmed that officials visited the AfD politician on Sunday to give him "preventive advice".
Wolf himself said the police had warned him to go outside the door alone in the dark.
In an emergency he should dial 110.
According to the dpa news agency, the suspect was first noticed by state security as a young person in 2016 when he was part of the controversial Koran distribution campaign "Read!"
was there.
A few months ago, the man uploaded a photo on the Internet with a little girl on which they both show the so-called "Tawheed finger".
This is an Islamic gesture that the terrorist organization "Islamic State" took for itself.
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mes / dpa
