Photo: @MichaelStuerzi on X, 24 July 2024
It’s been almost two months since an Afghan failed asylum seeker killed 29-year-old police officer Rouven Laur in Mannheim, Germany. The Islamist attacker—Sulaiman Ataee, 25—also stabbed and seriously injured five other people, including 59-year-old activist Michael Stürzenberger, who was scheduled to speak at the May 31st anti-Islamism event.
Stürzenberger is still being treated for and recovering from his injuries.
On Wednesday, he posted on X:
Now surgery on the tooth root that was severed by the Afghan’s knife. 2 weeks ago knee surgery because of swollen bursa caused by one of the 7 knife stabs. Titanium staples in the jaw will be removed in November.
Sulaiman Ataee arrived in Germany as a 14-year-old but because of his young age, he was not deported after his asylum application was rejected. After he married a German national, he was given a residence permit. Neighbors said “he used to be normal” but that his appearance and demeanor had changed over time—he had grown a beard and had “suddenly become more reserved—and aggressive.”
According to the media, Ataee had been radicalized and shared propaganda for the Islamic State on YouTube. At the time of the attacks, he was reportedly unemployed and receiving government benefits.
Stürzerberger, a prominent activist with the anti-Islamization, anti-jihad group Bürgerbewegung Pax Europa (BPE), said in a statement on Facebook that it was unclear to him “how this Afghan Muslim Sulaiman Ataee could develop such a fanatic will to annihilate against us”:
The BPE has always differentiated, factually grounded and factually criticized Political Islam. We have declared time and time again that we have nothing against peaceful, democratically sound and modern minded Muslims. A spiritual Islam that doesn’t want to overpower all people with Sharia and doesn’t claim sole secular power is completely fine.
We need to get there, and that should be the biggest social challenge we will face in the coming decades. This can be best achieved in cooperation with modern-minded Muslims and Islamic associations who value life in a democratic and free society as much as we do.
Ataee, who was shot by police and initially reported dead, remained in an induced coma in a hospital in Mannheim for three weeks after the attack. Upon regaining consciousness, he was reportedly “very rude” to hospital staff and had no regrets about the attacks.
The German government completely stopped deportations to Afghanistan after the Taliban retook power of the country in 2021. The Mannheim attacks led to criticism of this policy, with even Interior Minister Nancy Faeser saying “people who pose a potential threat to Germany’s security must be deported quickly.”
Ironically, the Islamist attacker had not been on the radar of law enforcement, while Stürzenberger had been monitored by Bavarias’s intelligence agency because of his engagement in the anti-Islamization movement.