The Berlin Regional Court ('Kammergericht') announced its verdict on Thursday in the case of the stabbing attack at the Holocaust Memorial. A 20-year-old Syrian was sentenced to 13 years of imprisonment. The judges found it proven that the defendant attacked a Spanish tourist with a knife in the field of stelae ('Stelenfeld') of the memorial site in February 2025, causing life-threatening injuries to the neck. The victim could only be saved through emergency surgery.
The court was convinced that the man acted out of a radical Islamist and antisemitic conviction. He deliberately chose the crime scene because he expected to find people of Jewish faith there. The defendant, who was 19 years old at the time of the crime, was convicted under general criminal law for attempted murder, dangerous bodily harm, and attempted membership in a foreign terrorist organization, among other things. The Federal Public Prosecutor's Office ('Bundesanwaltschaft') had demanded a life sentence, while the defense had pleaded for a juvenile sentence of seven years.
During the trial, the defendant confessed to the act and showed remorse. He stated that he had been radicalized through propaganda by the so-called Islamic State (IS) on the internet and was under the influence of an online guide. The court took the confession into account when determining the sentence but emphasized the particular gravity of the act and the insidious ('heimt c_ckische') approach of the convicted person, who had approached his victim from behind.
