Suspect in Hamburg attack was known to German police

Authorities didn’t believe suspect posed danger.

BERLIN — German police said Saturday that a 26-year-old man accused of killing one person and wounding five others with a knife in Hamburg was known to them as a recently radicalized Islamic extremist, but that they had not believed he posed an imminent danger.

Hamburg authorities were still piecing together what motivated the man, a Palestinian born in the United Arab Emirates, to attack shoppers and passers-by in and around a supermarket Friday. They described him as suffering from psychological problems. Authorities did not release his name, in keeping with German privacy laws.

“It remains unclear which was the overriding element,” said Andy Grote, Hamburg’s interior minister.

The man’s application for asylum had been rejected, and he was in the process of being deported, officials said.

Authorities said they had so far found no indication that the man had any links to local or international terrorist groups, but that they were still looking into his background. Police have opened an investigation and are holding the man on suspicion of murder and attempted murder, but charges will not be filed until the completion of a psychological assessment, said Jörg Fröhlich, the Hamburg state prosecutor.

Federal prosecutors, who handle terrorist attacks, have not yet taken over the case, he said.

Friday’s attack is sure to draw parallels to the Dec. 19 truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market carried out by Anis Amri that killed 12 and injured dozens. Like the Hamburg attacker, Amri was known to the police and was facing deportation, but still managed to slip through cracks.

Unlike Amri, who pledged loyalty to the Islamic State group, the Hamburg attacker has been cooperating with authorities, who were trying to acquire identification papers for him from the Palestinian Authority, which are required for his deportation.

Authorities were alerted to the possible radicalization of the man after one of his friends contacted security officials, said Torsten Voss, director of Hamburg’s state intelligence agency. “A friend of his told us that this guy used to frequently drink alcohol, but recently he had noticed a change,” Voss said, describing the friend’s conversation with officials in August 2016.

“They said he started talking a lot about the Quran, stopped drinking alcohol and questioning many things.”