Berlin police on Wednesday arrested a Syrian citizen suspected of encouraging an Islamist terrorist to stab a tourist at the German capital’s Holocaust Memorial on February 21, 2025, prosecutors said.
The suspect, identified as Khalaf A. in line with German privacy laws, is accused of aiding and abetting attempted murder and grievous bodily harm in the stabbing, which left a Spanish tourist seriously wounded.
Prosecutors said they suspected that Khalaf A., 37, had spent the afternoon before the attack with the stabber and encouraged him to go ahead with the attack.
The Berlin district court in March sentenced a 20-year-old Syrian refugee, identified as Wassim Al M., to 13 years in jail for carrying out the stabbing. He was convicted of attempted murder and attempted membership in a foreign terrorist organization.
The court found he traveled from Leipzig to Berlin to carry out an attack in the name of the Islamic State terror group, and settled on the Holocaust Memorial because “he believed he would find people of Jewish faith there.”
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After stabbing the Spanish tourist in the throat, Wissam Al.M. shouted, “Allahu akbar,” Arabic for “God is great,” the court said. He was arrested nearly three hours after the attack at the memorial, when he approached officers with blood on his hands and clothes.
A candle is placed at the Holocaust memorial, covered with ice, on the eve of the International Holocaust Memorial Day in Berlin, Germany, January 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Wassim Al M. claimed during his trial that he had regretted the attack immediately, and that he had traveled to Berlin under pressure from an online acquaintance he had gotten to know as he watched Islamic State videos.
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a field of 2,700 gray concrete slabs near the Brandenburg Gate in the heart of Berlin, commemorates the six million Jews murdered by Nazi Germany during the Second World War.
The stabbing at the memorial took place two days before a national election in which migration became a critical issue, pushed to the forefront by a string of deadly attacks involving immigrants in the months before the vote.
Germany has also grown increasingly alarmed about rising anti-Jewish sentiment amid the war sparked in Gaza by the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023.
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