He wanted to die a ‘martyr’s death’ and die ‘for Allah’ on the front line: this is what an 18-year-old from Aargau wrote in his diary in February. In March, the apprentice installed a messenger app so that he could communicate in encrypted form with sympathisers of the terrorist organisation Islamic State.
In May, events came to a head: the Swiss-Turkish dual citizen expressed his conviction in an audio message that it was right to kill ‘infidels’. As ‘proof,’ he cited passages from the Koran that were supposed to support his statements. According to the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper, he then downloaded instructions for making explosives and guidelines on how a fighter should behave tactically from an Islamist website – and he bought a knife.
He sent a co-worker an IS song entitled ‘I die to live with the immortals’. He asked a person who is anonymised in the court order whether it would be okay to drive into a crowd of people to kill them – even if there were Muslims among the victims. Otherwise, another option would be to ‘stab people randomly in the city’.
According to the court order, a source informed the Federal Office of Police (Fedpol) in mid-May about the 18-year-old’s plot. On June 4, the Aargau native declared in an audio message that he supported IS. Two days later, the authorities intervened and the Office of the Attorney General has been investigating ever since.
Aargau: 18-Jähriger plante Anschlag und beschaffte sich Messer für «Märtyrertod» – 20 Minuten