After Brokstedt’s knife attack: “A feeling of fear and insecurity”

“A general feeling of fear and insecurity” – that’s what Schleswig-Holstein’s Education Minister Karin Prien sees after Brokstedt’s knife attack. The CDU politician spoke to teachers and students on Friday morning in the commercial school in the city of Neumünster, which the two victims had attended. “I came here today first and foremost to express that we mourn together with the students, with the teachers, with the social workers, with the school psychologists. The whole country is mourning,” said the CDU politician after the talks.

She was able to convince herself that there was a very good crisis intervention team at the school. According to Prien, the entire school community, the entire staff, is working on the crime together with the class in which the killed student was and the class of the boy who was killed. “But of course the other students are also affected by the fact that such a crime could happen on a railway line that they use every day.” There is a lot to be done.

“But I experienced a school community here today that stands together and tries together to deal with such an incredible event,” said Prien. Later in the state parliament, she added: “There is a general feeling of fear and insecurity, and I think we will have to deal with that far beyond this individual school in the coming weeks and months.”

The 17-year-old and the 19-year-old, who were killed in the attack on a train from Kiel to Hamburg on Wednesday, knew each other. For the afternoon, a prayer service for the victims was prepared in the church of the Brokstedt Evangelical Lutheran congregation, as the Altholstein church district announced. Visitors could then light candles. Thanks should also be given to the rescue workers.

The stabbed 19-year-old worked as a trainee in vehicle maintenance at Deutsche Bahn in Neumünster, as the branch manager of the railway and transport union North said. In a post on their Facebook page, the union mourned the loss of their member.

Five other travelers were injured in the knife attack, some seriously. The attacker was arrested by the police at Brokstedt train station after other passengers overpowered him. The 33-year-old suspect Ibrahim A. was released just a few days ago by order of the Hamburg Regional Court from the Billwerder prison, where he was in custody for a violent crime.

I saw a school community here today that stands together and tries to cope with such an incredible event.

Schleswig-Holstein’s Minister of Education Karen Prien

After the fact, there are still unanswered questions about how the authorities will deal with the suspect, who previously committed a crime and is in custody. The question is whether the bloody deed committed by the 33-year-old stateless Palestinian could have been prevented, said Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) on Thursday evening in Brokstedt.

According to the authorities, the man had repeatedly committed violent crimes since entering Germany in 2014. A subsidiary protection status prevented his deportation.

“How could it happen that he was no longer in a prison despite so many previous convictions?” asked Faeser, who had come to Brokstedt with Schleswig-Holstein’s Prime Minister Daniel Günther (CDU). Now it has to be clarified how it could happen “that he was released from custody so early,” said Faeser, and “why people who are so violent are still here in Germany”.

According to the Itzehoe public prosecutor’s office, there is no evidence of a terrorist background to the crime. According to Schleswig-Holstein’s interior minister, Sabine Sütterlin-Waack (CDU), the man’s interrogation has not yielded any results so far, so nothing can be said about his motives. She therefore warned against too hasty political demands.

The factions of the SPD and in the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia requested a special session of the legal committee. They emphasize that the suspect is said to be “a multiple offender known to the judiciary” who in the past “is said to have already attracted considerable attention, especially in North Rhine-Westphalia”.

To home page