Syrian refugee arrested after stabbing at Berlin holocaust memorial

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A Syrian refugee has been arrested after a stabbing at Berlin’s Holocaust memorial, in what prosecutors said was an antisemitic attack less than 48 hours before Sunday’s federal elections.

The 19-year-old suspect was arrested on Friday night after attacking a Spanish tourist with a knife, the latest in a series of assaults by foreign nationals that has marred the election campaign in the EU’s largest nation and fuelled a bitter political debate about migration.

Police and prosecutors said that the victim suffered life-threatening injuries after being stabbed in the neck at the Memorial to the Murdered Jew of Europe, a collection of more than 2,000 concrete slabs in the heart of Berlin that stands as a testament to Germany’s dark Nazi past.

The suspect, who lives in the eastern city of Leipzig, arrived in Germany two years ago as an unaccompanied minor and successfully applied for asylum, investigators said.

They said that the evidence so far pointed to a link to the conflict in the Middle East, and that the suspect had decided on a plan to kill Jews.

The attack comes as the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) is set to secure a historic second-place finish in Sunday’s vote with about 20 per cent of the vote, according to pollsters.

The party has seized upon a series of attacks, including a car-ramming by an exiled Saudi doctor in the city of Magdeburg in December that killed six people and left about 200 injured. In January, an Afghan national with psychiatric problems killed a two-year-old boy and an adult in Aschaffenburg. Earlier this month, two people died and 30 people were injured after a failed Afghan asylum seeker drove into a crowd in Munich.

Germany became Europe’s largest host of Syrians and Afghans after the 2015 decision by former chancellor Angela Merkel to open Germany’s doors to about 1mn people fleeing conflict, mostly in the Middle East.

The rise of the AfD, which took about 10 per cent of the vote in the last national elections in 2021, has forced other parties to tack to the right on migration — including the centre-right Christian Democrats, who are expected to come first in the election.