{"id":74620,"date":"2026-05-30T10:44:49","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T10:44:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/74620\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T10:44:49","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T10:44:49","slug":"swiss-media-dissect-recent-knife-attack-in-winterthur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/74620\/","title":{"rendered":"Swiss media dissect recent knife attack in Winterthur"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Knife<\/p>\n

On Thursday morning, a man injured three people in a terrorist-related attack in Winterthur. <\/p>\n

Keystone-SDA <\/p>\n

Between radicalisation and psychological problems: Saturday\u2019s newspapers feature views from forensic doctors and psychologists on Thursday morning\u2019s knife attack in Winterthur.\n<\/p>\n

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May 30, 2026 – 11:59\n<\/p>\n

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For German psychologist Ahmad Mansour, it is possible to diagnose mental illness, but not enough to detect radicalisation tendencies. \u201cPsychological instability and ideology do not exclude each other, but coexist and reinforce each other,\u201d he told Blick.<\/p>\n

Mansour is critical of the clinic that discharged the 31-year-old the day before he attacked and injured three people. \u201cI think it [the clinic] assessed the psychological situation, but not the ideological risk. To only look at one aspect is to set yourself up for failure.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Winterthur<\/p>\n

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Swiss psychiatric ward launches probe after knife attack <\/p>\n

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This content was published on <\/p>\n

May 29, 2026 <\/p>\n

Investigation at Winterthur psychiatric after discharged patient stabs three people at train station. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Read more: Swiss psychiatric ward launches probe after knife attack
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Psychologist and criminologist J\u00e9r\u00f4me Endrass sees the situation differently. As the man showed no signs of immediate danger, the clinic let him go, he told the Neue Z\u00fcrcher Zeitung. \u201cOf course, the doctors treating the patient take into account danger to others, but they don\u2019t carry out a risk assessment,\u201d said Endrass, the deputy director of canton Zurich\u2019s Office of Corrections and Rehabilitation.<\/p>\n

Psychiatric establishments are not informed if an individual has Islamist links. This is a political choice to protect citizens, Endrass added. Clinics have no access to court documents and, conversely, police and judicial authorities do not have access to medical files.<\/p>\n

An Islamist motive?<\/p>\n

Endrass said an Islamist motive is debatable in this case. According to currently knowledge, there are many indications that psychosis was at the forefront, reflected in the perpetrator\u2019s behaviour.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the time being, it seems that this man stabbed in a very random manner, which is unusual for ideologically motivated attackers,\u201d he said. Islamist-motivated attackers normally target symbols of the West, Jewish individuals or institutions, or other Muslims who, in their view, practice their faith badly.<\/p>\n

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\"Soldier<\/p>\n

More <\/p>\n

Foreign Affairs\n <\/p>\n

How the heightened IS terror threat affects Switzerland <\/p>\n

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This content was published on <\/p>\n

Mar 25, 2024 <\/p>\n

Switzerland remains on heightened alert against possible terror attacks. <\/p>\n

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Read more: How the heightened IS terror threat affects Switzerland
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Prioritising treatment<\/p>\n

Psychiatrist and forensic scientist Frank Urbaniok also has doubts that political radicalisation is at the forefront. However, he told the Schweiz am Wochenende paper, it is too early to say clearly.<\/p>\n

Deporting the attacker, an option raised by canton Zurich\u2019s Security Director Mario Fehr, would in principle be possible for Urbaniok, but in the case of schizophrenia, treatment must take precedence.<\/p>\n

In psychiatric hospitals, there is an above-average proportion of patients from immigrant backgrounds suffering from serious illnesses. \u201cThis over-representation is a problem,\u201d says Urbaniok.<\/p>\n

No such thing as zero risk<\/p>\n

G\u00e9raldine Casutt, who leads radicalisation prevention efforts in canton Vaud, told Le Temps that there has been a change in the profile of people coming on her radar. \u201cWe are increasingly faced with minors fascinated by violence and strongly influenced by social media,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

There are always other profiles with a history of radicalisation and whose acts remain unpredictable, despite professional care, Casutt said, confirming that the line between psychiatric disorder and radical ideology is not always easy to define.<\/p>\n

Carers and close contacts can do their best, but \u201cthere is no such thing as zero risk\u201d, Casutt said. \u201cA person who is not under court order has full freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adapted from French by AI\/dos<\/p>\n

How we work <\/p>\n

We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.<\/p>\n

If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at\u00a0english@swissinfo.ch<\/a><\/p>\n

Articles in this story <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Thursday morning, a man injured three people in a terrorist-related attack in Winterthur. Keystone-SDA Between radicalisation and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74621,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[101,312,100,1292,72,103,24717,41,17,13390],"class_list":["post-74620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-switzerland","tag-article","tag-beat-various","tag-latest-news","tag-law-and-order","tag-police","tag-production-type-deepl-autotranslation","tag-psychology","tag-swiss","tag-switzerland","tag-terrorism"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116663125825612545","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}