August 19, 2020
BERLIN (AP) – An Iraqi-born man intentionally drove his car on motorcycles along a stretch of the Berlin highway, leaving at least one user in a potentially fatal state in what Gerguy officials described as a terrorist attack.
“Based on the current state of our investigation, we assume this is an Islamist motivational attack,” said Berlin’s internal senator, Andreas Geisel. “Religious origin cannot be excluded.”
Six other people were injured, three of them seriously, when the 30-year-old man allegedly entered several vehicles, deliberately hitting motorcycles on Tuesday night, Prosecutors and Berlin police said in a joint statement.
Accidents occurred at 3 other peak-hour locations on the BAB100 road at a time before 7 p.m. caused the total closure of one of Berlin’s main traffic arteries.
Investigators have revealed the man’s identity, as is customary in Germany, but local media have known the suspect as Sarmad D. He’s under investigation for three cases of attempted murder.
There were indications that the boy had intellectual aptitude problems.
“The fact that the suspect is possibly suffering from mental health problems does not facilitate this challenge,” Geisel said. “If non-public challenges are combined with ideas laden with religion, they can lead to uncontrollable acts; yesterday’s occasions have shown in a very painful way how vulnerable our society is.”
Prosecutor Martin Steltner told reporters that they were investigating whether the suspect was related to a terrorist organization or if others were involved in the attack and had not yet uncovered any clues.
However, investigators were advised that the guy would possibly have had contact with other extremists, Steltner said.
The suspect, who was driving a black Opel Astra, stopped on the road after the third turn of fate and placed an old munitions box on the roof of his car, claiming it contained explosives, he said.
Several media outlets reported that the guy shouted “allahu akbar” or “God is great” when he was taken out of his car. The Bild newspaper reports that he also shouted, “No one is approaching, otherwise they will all die.”
Then the suspect unrolled a prayer rug and began to pray, the Tagesspiegel newspaper reported. An Arab immigrant policeman approached the man, spoke to him in Arabic, pulled him out of the car and stopped him, the newspaper reported.
According to Tagesspiegel, the guy is known to the Berlin police. He was born in Baghdad in 1990 and lived in a refugee home in Berlin. In 2018, he was arrested for injuring others and taken to a psychiatric facility for a short time, Tagesspiegel reported.
Dpa reported that the suspect allegedly referred to his plans on Facebook before the attack. He posted photos of the car he then used in the attack, as well as written, he said.
After the man’s arrest, many other people trapped on the nearby road were taken out of their cars. Specialists opened the box with a strong jet of water but only discovered equipment inside.
Of the three critically injured, one is in a life-threatening condition with serious head and back injuries, Steltner said. One of the three firefighters on his way home from work.
“If you deliberately goal the bikes, you don’t stand a chance,” Geisel said.
The suspect first crashed into a car on the road in the Wilmersdorf community and then entered a motorcyclist, leaving him with life-threatening injuries. He ran over a momentary user on a scooter and eventually used his car to push a third motorcyclist to the front of another car, prosecutor Steltner said. The suspect was nevertheless discharged from his car near the Alboinstrasse exit in Berlin’s Tempelhof district.
The incident caused long traffic jams on Tuesday night. People who were taken from the scene of the suspect and others who were stranded on the road for hours were receiving from the German Red Cross, tweeted berlin firefighters on Tuesday night.
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