German police have said Monday evening’s axe attack on a Bavaria train was politically motivated, but have yet to find a direct link between Islamist extremism and the perpetrator, a 17-year-old Afghan refugee.
On Tuesday, the Islamic State group released a video of a man they claimed was the perpetrator, naming him as Muhammad Riyad.
In the video he reportedly describes himself as a "fighter for the Caliphate", promising to carry out "martyr attacks" in Germany and waving a knife he says he will use to "slaughter non-believers".
"The current state of the investigation is that there are no indicators . . . of a link between this young man to an Islamist network," said Joachim Hermann, interior minister of Bavaria, suggesting the man "self-radicalised".
Shortly after 9pm on Monday, the 17-year-old boarded a regional train bound for Würzburg, northern Bavaria.
To cries of "Allahu Akbar", audible on emergency call recordings, he attacked five members of a Hong Kong family with an axe and knife, two of whom are in a critical condition in hospital.
After an emergency stop the teenager fled the train, described by one witness as “looking like a slaughterhouse”, and attacked a woman out walking her dog before heading for the banks of the River Main.
He hid in undergrowth before springing out when two police officers neared him shortly before 10pm, wielding his weapons.
The two officers then shot him at close range, one in the forehead.
"It was a self-defence situation, they had no other option to resist the suspect," said Bardo Backert, senior state prosecutor in Würzburg.
Investigations
Two investigations have been opened following the attack: one into the shootings, and another into whether the teenager was radicalised by Islamic State, or recruited posthumously as a so-called “lone wolf”.
The 17-year-old came to Germany 13 months ago as an unaccompanied minor, was granted a residency permit, given a job placement and, two weeks ago, placed with a foster family.
The family said he became withdrawn at the weekend after hearing of a friend's death in Afghanistan.
On Monday night, he said he was going out for a cycle, but criminal investigators said he instead headed for the train with an “absolute will to kill”.
He left behind in his bedroom sketches of the Islamic State flag and a note, apparently to his father, reading: “Now pray for me that I can take revenge on non-believers and that I get into heaven.”
Friends of the teenager said he was a practising Muslim but not a religious fanatic, and attended the mosque only on holy days.
“We have to ask ourselves how it can be that an unremarkable person . . . and in no way radical could be realigned in such a short time,” said Joachim Hermann, Bavaria’s interior minister and a loud critic last year of chancellor Angela Merkel’s asylum policy.
On Tuesday, a noticeably restrained Mr Hermann said: “We cannot make sweeping judgments about refugees.”
