An Iraqi-born man intentionally drove his car on motorcycles along a stretch of the Berlin highway, leaving at least one user in a life-threatening condition in what Gerguy described Wednesday as a terrorist attack.
“Based on the current state of our investigation, we assume this is an attack with Islamist motives,” 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 in 3 other places in rush hour in 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 Samrad 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.”
Police and prosecutors said they were investigating whether the suspect was related to a terrorist group, but had not yet discovered any evidence.
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. Then a policeman of Arab immigrant origin 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 3 seriously injured, one is in a potentially fatal condition, dpa reported. One of the three is a firefighter who was on his way home from work, Geisel said. It is not transparent if he is the one who is in a potentially fatal condition.
“If you deliberately goal the bikes, you don’t stand a chance,” Geisel said.
The incident caused long traffic jams on Tuesday night. People who were taken from the site where the suspect was being held and others who were stranded on the road for hours were receiving from the German Red Cross, the Berlin firefighters tweeted on Tuesday night.