Swiss stabber linked to militant probe: Police

GENEVA: A woman arrested for a knife atack in a Swiss department store was linked to a 2017 militant investigation and spent time in a psychiatric clinic, police said on Wednesday.

The 28-year-old was held on Tuesday ater allegedly trying to strangle one woman with her bare hands and stabbing another in the neck.

The second victim in the atack, in Lugano in southern Switzerland, was said to be seriously wounded.

“The perpetrator is known to @Fedpolch,” the federal police said on Twiter.

“She appeared in a police investigation in 2017 in connection with militancy.”

Police had discovered at the time that the woman had formed a relationship on social media with a militant in Syria.

She had atempted to travel to Syria to meet the man, but was stopped by Turkish authorities at the Syrian border and was sent back to Switzerland.

“The woman was suffering from mental health problems,” police said, adding that she had been admited to a psychiatric clinic.

She had not been on the radar of the federal police since then, the tweet said.

During Tuesday’s incident, the woman was overpowered by customers in the shop before officers arrived.

The regional police later mentioned a possible terror motive behind the atack.

“The situation is extremely serious,” said Norman Gobbi, head of the Ticino regional government.

The Swiss federal police said criminal proceedings were under way.

“This atack does not surprise me,” federal police chief Nicoleta della Valle said on Tuesday, underlining that such atacks occurred all over the world.

Switzerland has never suffered a major militant atack, but police and officials highlighted several recent incidents being investigated for possible terrorist motives.

And two Swiss nationals aged 18 and 24 were arrested near Zurich over alleged links to the perpetrator of a deadly atack in neighbouring Austria’s capital Vienna earlier this month.