“I am a soldier of the Caliphate and am launching a martyrdom operation in Germany. … I have lived among you, lived in your homes. I planned this in your own land. And I will slaughter you in your own homes and in the streets. … I will slaughter you with this knife and sever your necks with an axe, if Allah permits. ” – Germany’s axe-attacker, in an Islamic State video.
“Künast should not be watching so many bad movies. Who would believe that if someone attacks the police with an axe and a knife, the police are supposed to shoot the axe out of the attacker’s hands? That is really clueless and stupid. If police officers are attacked in this manner, they will not engage in Kung Fu. Unfortunately, it sometimes ends in the death of the perpetrator. This will not change.” – Rainer Wendt, Chairman of the German Police Union.
The Bavarian Criminal Police Office has now launched an internal investigation to determine if police were justified in shooting a jihadist.
A 17-year-old Afghan asylum seeker brandishing an axe and shouting “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is the greatest”) seriously injured five people on a train in Würzburg, Bavaria. The assailant was shot dead by police after he charged at them with the axe.
The teenager, who had claimed asylum after arriving in Germany in June 2015 as an unaccompanied minor, had been placed with a foster family just two weeks before the attack as a reward for being “well integrated.”
Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said police had found a hand-painted Islamic State flag in his room at his foster home in the nearby town of Ochsenfurt. They also found a farewell letter to his father which read: “Now pray for me so that I can take revenge on these infidels. Pray for me that I can get to paradise.”
Shortly after the attack, the Islamic State released a video purporting to show an Afghan asylum seeker holding a knife and making threats against Germany:
“In the name of Allah, I am a soldier of the Caliphate and am launching a martyrdom operation in Germany.
“Here I am. I have lived among you, lived in your homes. I planned this in your own land. And I will slaughter you in your own homes and in the streets.
“I will make you forget about the spectacular attacks in France, if Allah permits.
“I will fight to the death, if Allah permits. I will slaughter you with this knife and sever your necks with an axe, if Allah permits.”
In the video, the Islamic State identified the attacker as Muhammad Riyad, who can be heard speaking Pashto, a language spoken in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. But German media identified the attacker as Riaz Khan Ahmadzai. The discrepancy raised questions about the teenager’s true identity.