The Swiss Attorney General's Office said on Wednesday May 18 that it had ordered the indictment of a young Swiss for a "
jihadist-motivated
" knife attack which left two injured on November 24, 2020 in a department store in Lugano (South).
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"
The defendant is mainly accused of the assassination attempt and of having violated the al-Qaeda/IS
law", the federal law prohibiting in particular al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group, indicated the Public Ministry of the Confederation ( MPC) in a press release.
The 29-year-old young woman, domiciled in the canton of Ticino (Italian-speaking region of Switzerland), will also have to answer to justice for the illicit exercise of prostitution.
According to the indictment, filed with the Federal Criminal Court, the defendant “
acted intentionally and without any scruples
”.
The MPC accuses him of having "brutally attacked
his victims, chosen at random, with a knife with the aim of killing them and thus spreading terror among the population in the name of IS, triggering widespread media coverage and to propagate the ideology of the IS
".
"Falling in love" with a jihadist
One of the two victims was seriously injured in the neck.
The second victim finally managed to subdue the defendant with other people present at the scene and hold her until the arrival of the police.
The assailant had been placed in pre-trial detention after her arrest on November 24, 2020 and has been in early execution of sentence since August 2021. From the day of the attack, the federal police had mentioned a possible "
terrorist motivation
" and explained that the young woman had appeared in a 2017 police investigation in connection with jihadist terrorism.
The next day, the federal police clarified that the 2017 police investigations had shown that the assailant had "
fallen in love
" on social networks with a jihadist fighter in Syria.
She had tried to join him but had been stopped at the Turkish-Syrian border by the Turkish authorities and sent back to Switzerland.
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Suffering from psychological problems, she had been placed on her return in a psychiatric institution, and, since 2017, she had not appeared in any terrorism-related cases followed by the federal police.
The MPC will communicate its sentencing requests during the proceedings before the Federal Criminal Court.
