Lots of shots, lots of clues and lots of unanswered questions
Published: Friday, Sep 6th 2024, 17:10
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Following the suspected terrorist attack in Munich, investigators are looking into indications of an Islamist or anti-Semitic motive.
This is the "working hypothesis" based on the information available so far, said Gabriele Tilmann, head of the Bavarian Central Office for Combating Extremism and Terrorism (ZET) at the Munich Public Prosecutor General's Office. Messages from the 18-year-old shooter from Austria with indications of a motive have not yet been found.
The motive for another attack in Germany - on a police station in Linz in Rhineland-Palatinate early on Friday morning - is clearer. According to investigators, this was Islamist-motivated. According to the investigators, a man armed with a machete and a knife appeared at the police station at 2.40 a.m. and repeatedly shouted "Allahu Akbar" ("God is great"). He had also announced that he wanted to kill police officers. The man was overpowered and no police officers were injured. The 29-year-old is in custody for attempted murder. Investigators found a drawn flag of the Islamic State terrorist organization on the wall of his apartment.
Executions re-enacted with video game avatar
According to Tilmann, the investigators' working hypothesis in the Munich case is based on the findings of Austrian authorities. The 18-year-old is said to have re-enacted executions in a video game with created avatars, said the Vice President of the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office (LKA), Guido Limmer. When the young man was investigated last year, material was found on him that indicated sympathies with the Islamist organization Haiat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). It is still unclear whether he still had these sympathies or rather sympathized with IS, said Tilmann.
Secondly, according to investigators, the place and time point to such a motive: The perpetrator had shot at the Nazi Documentation Center and the Israeli Consulate General on the anniversary of the Olympic assassination in Munich in 1972.
According to information from the Austrian Ministry of the Interior, the father of the Munich attacker had perceived his son as mentally unstable. He was an intelligent pupil who had developed into a loner during the pandemic, they said. He had been teased and taunted at school.
Shots fired at NS documentation center and Israeli consulate
The 18-year-old is said to have fired a total of nine shots with his Swiss army carbine - first at buildings, including the Nazi Documentation Center and the neighbouring Consulate General of Israel, which was closed at the time of the crime. Later, he apparently also shot at police officers. "The colleagues noticed a shot being fired at them. Where exactly he was aiming at must of course be investigated in detail," said the Munich police chief of operations, Christian Huber.
The police officers finally shot the 18-year-old down with a large number of shots. A policeman and a woman suffered blast trauma, the attacker died on the spot. The officers involved are being cared for, according to a police statement. The State Office of Criminal Investigation is conducting a standard investigation into the legality of the police shooting.
Carabiner acquired by collector
The shooter had bought his weapon from a collector just one day before the attack, as Austria's Director General for Public Security, Franz Ruf, reported. According to the LKA, the carbine with mounted bayonet dates back to the 19th century. However, head of operations Huber emphasized that it was a "weapon with massive penetrating power".
According to Director General Ruf, the 18-year-old had also bought around 50 rounds of ammunition for the carbine - even though he was actually banned from using weapons in Austria due to previous investigations and suspicions of radicalization. However, carbines are considered category C weapons there, which are reloaded manually after each shot: They can be purchased without a firearms document and only have to be registered with the authorities up to six weeks after purchase.
Bavarian police had no information about the shooter
Austrian investigators had not found any evidence of radicalization or Islamist propaganda, but at least they had the 18-year-old on their radar. In Bavaria, on the other hand, the young man with Bosnian roots was a blank slate for the state police until the shooting at the consulate. A search of the databases on the 18-year-old Austrian was negative, said a spokesman for the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office (LKA). "We had no documents on him."
According to the Munich public prosecutor's office, the investigation is now focusing on the one hand on the motive, which has so far only been suspected, and on the other hand on the question of whether there may have been accomplices, helpers or at least confidants. One question is whether the 18-year-old was involved in any kind of network, said ZET director Tilmann.
18-year-old also fired at neighboring building
In view of the Israeli Consulate General and the Nazi Documentation Center as possible targets of the alleged attack, the sequence of events also raises questions. Descriptions by the police indicate how amateurishly the man had apparently planned his attack. The 18-year-old also shot at neighboring buildings. He had also forced his way into two buildings, injuring himself and leaving a trail of blood behind. He tried to climb a fence to the Israeli Consulate General from a vehicle, but was unable to scale it.
However, the shooter must have realized early on that his original plan could be thwarted: a passing patrol had already spotted him getting out of the car on Thursday morning and reported that he might have a weapon with him. A short time later, the 18-year-old was dead.
©Keystone/SDA
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