Jihadist motivation in Munich’s attack, prosecutors say

Afghan, arrested on suspicion of driving in a crowd of people in Munich, wounded at 36, admitted that he had committed the attack and seemed to have had religious motivation, prosecutors say.

Munich Prosecutor Gabriele Tilman told reporters that the suspect had said “Allahu Akbar” (God is the greatest) in Arabic when he was detained and she suggested that he “may have had an Islamist motivation.”

A two -year -old girl is among two people who were critically injured in the attack near Munich Central Station on Thursday. She is in intensive treatment.

Another eight people were seriously injured. Updating details of the victims, police said 32 were men and four were women.

Thursday cars in the heart of Munich came 10 days before the Germans went out to the fangs of the federal elections, overshadowed by a series of earlier attacks by immigrants. Two of the alleged attackers had come from Afghanistan.

As the snow fell to Munich on Friday, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier visited the attack on the attack and said “the brutality of this act is upset by us and leaves us stunned.”

Police chief Guido Limmer said the suspect in Munich, identified as Farhad N, who was 24 years old, was questioned for two hours after the attack.

During an interrogation, he told police that he had deliberately banished his car Mini Cooper in the crowd that participated in the protest of unions at the time.

Farhad N had to appear in court on Friday afternoon. He had no previous criminal record and police said there was no evidence to contact a jihadist group. He seems to have acted alone, police say.

He arrived in Germany in 2016 and although his asylum application was rejected, he was allowed to remain in Germany and had a valid residence and work permit.

The Munich prosecutor confirmed to reporters that Farhad N lived in Germany legally.

The attack happened on the eve of the Munich Security Conference. After arriving in town on Friday, US Vice President JD Vance expressed his condolences to the 36 injured in the attack.

Initially, the authorities suggested that the suspect was convicted of theft, but later Bavaria’s interior Minister Joachim Herman explained that he worked as a detective of the store and appeared as a witness in the processes of theft, not a supposed criminal.