Attack in Solingen

Video purports to show terrorist swearing allegiance to IS

Issa al H., the knife attacker in Solingen, is said to be featured in an IS propaganda video.

(Bild: APA Pool/APA/dpa/Uli Deck, Amaq News)

Two days after the deadly knife attack in the German town of Solingen, the Islamic State (IS) terrorist militia has released a video purporting to show the perpetrator. The video, which lasts around one minute, shows a masked, young-looking man holding a long knife up to the camera. 

He swears allegiance to the leader of the IS in Arabic and refers to him with the honorary title of "Emir". IS had already claimed responsibility for the attack, which claimed three lives, on Saturday.

Authenticity of the video cannot be verified
IS announced via its propaganda channels on the internet that it had received videos from the perpetrator of the knife attack in Solingen. When the video was recorded and whether the man shown in it is the perpetrator could not initially be verified.

In the video, the man calls himself Samarkand A. - possibly a combat name - and says he comes from Deir al-Zor in eastern Syria, where cells of the terrorist militia are still active and carry out attacks.

Attacker now in custody
The suspected perpetrator of the Solingen attack, a 26-year-old Syrian, turned himself in on Saturday evening and is now in custody. The German federal prosecutor's office accuses him of having joined IS. Because of his radical Islamist convictions, he had decided to kill as many people as possible at the Solingen city festival who he considered to be infidels. The name given by the investigators is different from the one in the video.

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Fotos

The man in the IS video says that his attack was in retaliation for the killing of Muslims in Syria, Iraq and Bosnia. Addressing his parents, he says his attack is also an act of revenge for the "people of Palestine" who have to suffer massacres with the support of "Zionists" - a reference to the war between Israel and the Islamist Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Demonstrations in Solingen
In Solingen, various groups demonstrated in the city center on Sunday. In total, there were three different gatherings around the city center and the crime scene, said a police spokesman. After everything had initially proceeded peacefully, some participants in a demonstration by left-wing groups had broken through a police cordon. This forced the officers to defend themselves with batons.

The police had been on the scene with appropriate forces to provide security. It was unclear in the evening how many people gathered in total. The police expected around 100 to 200 people to attend a mourning rally called by the alliance "Wuppertal stellt sich quer" (Wuppertal stands up for itself), which is supported by left-wing and civic organizations. Wuppertal is located close to Solingen in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. According to the police, 50 participants were registered for a rally organized by the Junge Alternative, the youth organization of the right-wing AfD party.