Islamist-motivated attackers in Germany often choose knives as their weapon of choice because firearms are harder to get, a leading expert from Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) told the Funke media group.
“Even in raids and searches, we very rarely find assault rifles or guns,” said Sven Kurenbach, the head of BKA’s department focused on Islamist-motivated terrorism and extremism.
“It’s different in France or Belgium, where Islamist terrorists have repeatedly used firearms,” said Kurenbach.
The crucial factor, he said, is that access to weapons in Germany is much more strictly regulated.
“Additionally, firearms – even on the illegal black market – are not cheap and the – often young – Islamist perpetrators usually have little in financial resources.”
Kurenbach went on to say that investigators are now more successful in having terrorist propaganda deleted from the web due to regulations obliging platforms to delete such content quickly. The average deletion rate is around 90%.”
From our point of view, this is an extremely good result,” he told the media group.
Kurenbach however also called on the operators to adjust their algorithms.
“This is because the platforms’ algorithms often repeatedly bring new jihadist content to the profile pages of young users once they have shown an interest in it,” explained the expert.
“In extreme cases, anyone interested in components that can be used to make bombs is shown new and cheaper offers.”