Munich gunman said to have planned his attack for a year

The teenage gunMUNICH— man who killed nine peo- ple in a shooting rampage in Munich had been treated for depression and paranoia and appeared to have begun planning the attack about a year ago, German authorities said Sunday.

The gunman, Ali Sonboly, who was the 18-year-old son of Iranian immigrant par- ents and held both German and Iranian citizenship, had sought refuge in the inter- net, where he immersed him- self in a violent video game and the so-called darknet of encrypted networks, through which authorities suspect that he acquired the pistol used to carry out the attack.

Sonboly appeared to have begun planning the attack after visiting the site of a 2009 school shooting in Winnenden, Germany, in which 15 people were killed, initial evidence gleaned from his computer showed.

“We found a manifesto of his, in which he con- siders such attacks,” said Robert Heimberger, chief of the Bavarian State Crim- inal Police. “From photos we found on a digital camera, we know that he visited the site and took pic- tures there.”

Sonboly was “obsessed with that attack,” Heim- berger said.

Later Sunday, Munich police said they had arrested a 16-year-old Afghan on suspicion of knowing about the planned attack, but failing to inform authorities.

The Afghan teenager, who was not further iden- tified, was a friend of Son- boly and went to police on Friday night and was ques- tioned. But after searching the teenager’s home, police found conflicting informa- tion, leading them to detain the young man.

Although most of the victims in Friday’s shooting at the Olympic mall in a neighborhood to the west of downtown Munich were also teenagers from the Munich area, police and prosecutors said they had found no links between them and the gunman.