A Syrian man has admitted carrying out a knife attack in the German town of Solingen last August in which three people were killed.
“I have committed a grave crime, I am prepared to accept the verdict,” Issa al H said in a statement read out by his defence lawyers at the start of his trial in the western city of Düsseldorf.
Issa al H, whose surname was not made public because of German privacy rules, is accused of being a member of the Islamic State jihadist group, and pledging allegiance to IS in videos shortly before the attack.
The stabbings took place as Solingen was holding a three-day festival to mark its 650th anniversary and came shortly before a series of key regional elections.
In the space of a year, German cities saw a string of deadly attacks, which began in Mannheim in May 2024, when an Afghan national stabbed a police officer at a rally.
Most of the attackers were described as having migrant backgrounds and the killings played a significant part in the national debate leading up to Germany’s federal elections in February.
While most mainstream parties toughened their language on migration, the far-right AfD were seen as benefiting most from the heightened climate, coming second with almost 21% of the vote. They have since narrowed the gap with Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives even further.
The man accused of the 23 August Solingen knife attack had arrived in Germany as a refugee in 2022, but because he had already registered for asylum in Bulgaria he was ordered to be deported there.
By the time German authorities tried to deport him in 2023 he had disappeared.
On Tuesday, Issa al H appeared in a high-security wing of the court in Düsseldorf wearing a blue T-shirt, and kept his head bowed for most of the time he stood in the dock.
He is accused of three murders as well as 10 counts of attempted murder and further charges of grievous bodily harm.
Prosecutors allege he approached IS contacts on jihadist social media forums before the attack and he was then given help planning it and choosing his murder weapon.
In his statement read out by his lawyers, Issa al H said: “I killed innocents, not infidels.”
One of the people wounded in the Solingen attack sat in court on Tuesday, her arm in a sling, in a reminder of the wounds he inflicted in the city.
Athanasios Antonakis, a lawyer acting on behalf of a mother and daughter who were wounded in the attack, told public broadcaster WDR that “my clients are expecting this trial will help improve the healing process”.
