The Munich skyline, with its famed Zwiebelturn, the onion domes of the Frauenkirche, a Gothic cathedral was commissioned by Duke Sigismund and the people of Munich, and built in the 15th century.
An automobile drove into a crowd of people attending a rally organized by the Verdi trade union at Stiglmaierplatz in a busy part of Munich Thursday morning.
The driver was a 24-year-old Afghan who was immediately apprehended at the scene by police who were attending to the rally.
Stiglmaierplatz is a square in the city’s central district of Maxvorstadt named after the artist Johann Baptist Stiglmaier
The incident occurred at 10:30 a.m. local time, a time at which the Verdi rally was already underway, police said. Police were already at the rally for crowd control and were able to immediately take the driver, an asylum seeker who lives in Munich, into custody.
The interior of Munich’s Hauptbahnhof, or Ccentral Train Station, last month
“It’s terrible, but it was predictable,” said Alfred Gesierich, a Munich-area resident and accountant. “According to a study, a third of all refugees are traumatized and psychologically unstable. If only a fraction of them commit violent acts, people will be killed every month. We have allowed too many people into the country without any controls. This must stop now.”
“Mannheim, Solingen, Magdeburg, Aschaffenburg and now Munich: Is this supposed to go on?,” Gesierich asked.
The motive behind the attack was unclear at press time, but the bayerische Zentralstelle für Extremismus und Terrorismus der Generalstaatsanwaltschaft, or Bavarian Central Office for Extremism and Terrorism of the Public Prosecutor General’s Office, has taken over the investigation.
By mid-afternoon Central European Time, more details about the driver became known. The Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that the driver, Farhad N., was born in Kabul in 2001 and came to Germany in 2016. He is registered in Munich. According to people familiar with the case, he was not previously known to the federal and state constitutional protection authorities as an extremist. However, there are indications of a possible Islamist attitude, investigators said, and those will be further investigated including a review of the man’s social media profiles for corresponding postings.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
