Media: German court declares Afghan attacker legally insane after deadly knife rampage

A regional court in Aschaffenburg, Bavaria, has ordered the compulsory psychiatric confinement of an Afghan national who carried out a fatal knife attack on pedestrians in a city park earlier this year.

Presiding judge Carsten Krebs announced the verdict, stating that the accused had been found legally insane at the time of the crime, DPA reports.

A forensic psychiatric assessment determined that the 28-year-old man suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, rendering him not criminally responsible for his actions. The court’s decision has not yet entered into legal force.

The attack, which took place on January 22 in an Aschaffenburg park, left a 41-year-old man and a two-year-old child dead, while three other individuals sustained injuries.

According to investigators, the suspect used a 30-centimeter-long kitchen knife in his attack on a group of children in the city of Aschaffenburg's Schöntal Park.

A two-year-old Moroccan boy was fatally wounded, and a 41-year-old German man who tried to help was killed as well.

The attacker also allegedly stabbed a two-year-old Syrian girl and a 73-year-old German man, both of whom survived.

A 59-year-old teacher broke her arm during the assault.

The suspect, known to police for previous assaults, property damage, and resisting officers, fled the scene but was arrested near a set of railway tracks about 12 minutes after the first emergency call went out. A blood-stained knife was found nearby.

Authorities confirmed that the perpetrator had arrived in Germany in November 2022. His asylum request was rejected, and he had been ordered to leave the country prior to the incident.

By Vafa Guliyeva