On May 10, 2020, the Bavarian capital Munich apparently only narrowly escaped a catastrophe. According to the investigations of the Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office, Ali Reza K., now 36 years old, who was born in Iran and is an Afghan citizen, wanted to cause a bloodbath in the city centre. He had planned to speed into the pedestrian zone between Stachus and Marienplatz square in a high-horsepower car and “kill as many people as possible by running them over”.
The attempt failed because the man did not succeed in forcibly hijacking a vehicle despite several attempts. Armed with a kitchen knife about 30 centimetres long and presumably a massive iron hammer, he attacked a total of four cars waiting at a red light. He allegedly shouted “Allahu Akbar” (“God is greatest”) several times and smashed the windows of the cars. But the drivers were able to flee – and thus prevent worse.
For the Attorney General’s Office it is clear: “The accused acted out of Islamist motives”.
This Friday, the trial of Ali Reza K., who is mentally ill and has been treated in a specialised clinic for more than half a year, began at the Munich Regional Court. He suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and has delusions. There are many indications that he committed the crime in a state of diminished – if not even annulled – culpability. He was most likely not able to see the wrongness of the act and to act according to this insight.
The trial is therefore not about the question of how long the offender will have to spend in prison if convicted. Rather, the court will decide whether he belongs permanently in a psychiatric institution.
For the Attorney General’s Office, there is no doubt about this. It is convinced that the defendant can be expected to commit “considerable unlawful acts in the future and is therefore dangerous to the general public”. A final assessment is, of course, left to the renowned psychiatric expert Matthias Hollweg, who has examined the accused and will observe him throughout the entire trial.
The media interest in the trial is great, obviously because of the parallels to the fatal knife attack in Würzburg on June 25, 2021. There, too, the perpetrator is said to have been a mentally ill immigrant who shouted “Allahu Akbar” during his crime – for the investigators an indication of possible Islamist motives. Whether this is really the case remains to be seen – in Würzburg as in Munich.
Shortly after 9 a.m. the accused is led into courtroom A 101. A rather small, not too strong man, white trainers, jeans, light brown jumper, his dark hair shaved at the back and sides of his head. Next to him sits an interpreter who translates into Dari, one of the two official languages in Afghanistan. His public defender Ruth Beer has taken a seat behind him.
Beer makes a statement at the beginning of the trial. She basically admits the accusations against her client. However, she contradicts one central point: “The crime has no Islamist background. Ali Reza K. had “no contact with IS”, i.e. the terrorist organisation Islamic State, and had not shouted “Alahu Akbar”, as the investigators claim. Beer names a different motive for the crime. Her client was suffering from “delusions”.
For some time before the crime, he had been obsessed with the idea that the Italian Mafia had “killed his family” and “kidnapped his sister”. For this reason, Ali Reza K. had even gone to the Munich-Laim police station and tried to report the crimes that only existed in his imagination. “The police did not help him,” said Beer. However, her client had later been hospitalised for several days in a Munich clinic because of his massive delusions and fears.
The defence lawyer confirmed that Ali Reza K. had primarily targeted “Christians” in his – ultimately failed – assassination attempt. He had assumed that members of the Italian mafia were Christian. According to Beer, he wanted to “take revenge” for the alleged atrocities against his family. In doing so, he had acted on his own initiative and spontaneously.
How dangerous the situation was for the victims whose cars the accused wanted to hijack was made clear by an elderly gentleman, a retired engineer with glasses and a dark blue jacket. He was at the wheel of an Audi Q3, with his wife next to him. The couple was waiting at a red light. Suddenly they noticed a man who broke away from the group of pedestrians and came straight towards them. “He was shaking the handle of the driver’s door and kept hitting the window. He was shouting as he did so,” the witness reported. Regarding the attacker’s condition, he said, “He was out of control and became more and more aggressive.”
He and his wife were briefly “in shock”, the man said, but then he reacted quickly and “just accelerated”. Although the traffic lights were still red, he drove through the intersection. “That was real luck,” said the witness. In the rear-view mirror, he saw the assassin attacking another car.
Other victims also described frightening scenes at the start of the trial. The accused had tried to “tear open the car door” and “hit the window very hard”. When the man approached their car, they heard loud banging noises and were frightened. A young woman actually wanted to get out of the car, but her mother, who was also in the car, strongly advised her not to – “a good and correct decision”, as the presiding judge remarked.
The fact that the accused was caught quickly and could not carry out his “bloodthirsty plan” (quote from the judge) was due to a fortunate circumstance: two plainclothes police officers were observing the area around the crime scene. From their car, they were on the lookout for tyre thieves who had been causing insecurity in the neighbourhood for some time.
Suddenly they saw a man – the now accused – walking very fast past their car, a long knife hanging from his belt. The officers got out and told Ali Reza K. to stop “immediately” and lie down. They also threatened to use firearms. The man only reacted to the second demand. The police officers tied him up and took the knife from him.
During his first brief questioning, the man who was overpowered stated that he wanted to “do it for the IS” – i.e. the Islamic State – and “take revenge on Christians”. He confirmed to a police officer that he had shouted “Alahu Akbar” during the crime. Investigators did not find any evidence of actual contacts with terrorists, for example on the man’s mobile phone. In his statements to the police, Ali Reza K. also mentioned the alleged persecution of his family by the Italian mafia. Some of his relatives had been abducted to Greece and the Netherlands and “beheaded” there, he said.
Despite the heated situation, the Afghan seemed strangely calm and composed after his arrest, almost relaxed. A police officer in court: “He was smiling”.
Ali Reza K.’s plan to kill numerous people in the centre of Munich failed and is therefore not being prosecuted by the justice system. The charges are limited to “attempted robbery against motorists” in four cases and damage to property.
The personal circumstances of the accused were not discussed on the first day of the trial, such as questions about his arrival in Germany and his asylum status. This is to be made up for at the continuation of the trial next Monday.