The 2016 Hamburg stabbing attack, also referred to as Murder at the Alster or Alster Murder, was an attack on 16 October 2016 in the city of Hamburg, Germany. A 23- to 25-year-old man "of southern appearance" was named as the suspect. On 30 October 2016, the Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for the attack, though police later said a terrorist background or motive for the attack was "unlikely".
In the evening of 16 October 2016, a 16-year-old boy, named by the police as Viktor E., was stabbed near the Kennedybrücke, (Kennedy bridge), over the Alster lake in Hamburg at around 10:00 p.m. His 15-year-old girlfriend, who was sitting with him on the stairs near the waterfront, was also thrown into the water by the assailant. She managed to swim to the shore again while the perpetrator ran away. Viktor E. died in the hospital shortly afterwards. His girlfriend was not injured. [1]
Though the police dispersed flyers, no eyewitnesses were initially found, while divers attempted to find the knife in the water, but to no avail. The police agency admitted that it had no knowledge about the possible motivation of the perpetrator. On 27 October, police tried to reconstruct the murder at the crime scene. Specialists investigated the location of the crime scene again using metal detectors. [2]
On 30 October, it was reported that IS had claimed responsibility for the attack. Their news website Amaq claimed that a "soldier of the caliphate" had carried out the stabbing. Hamburg police confirmed the claim, and acknowledged that federal security authorities (Staatsschutz) were involved in the investigation. [1] The IS statement wrongly claimed that two people were attacked with a knife. [3]
During the investigation, Hamburg police contacted about 11,500 Hamburg doctors, operating under the assumption that the perpetrator was injured himself during the attack. Hamburg Medical Council suspended the obligation to secrecy for the doctors in the city in this case, but no significant developments emerged from the effort. [4]
On 2 November, it was reported that a female eyewitness had probably seen the perpetrator on the day of the attack, loitering near the crime scene. A facial composite of him was created and published by the police. [5] Police also reconstructed the last route of Viktor E. and his girlfriend from Steindamm, an inner city street, via Lohmühlenstraße station, to Jungfernstieg, and then to Kennedybrücke. The perpetrator may have followed his victims through that route. [6]
On 14 November, the mother of Viktor E. appealed to the public for assistance in the investigation; few useful clues had been provided to the police by then, although they posted handbills in several languages throughout the city. [7] [8] On 30 November, police stuck bills in about 170 residences used by refugees located all over the city. [9]
Police acknowledged that they had received 360 clues in total by 30 November, but that there were no significant developments in the case by then. Police said that they considered a terrorist background or motive unlikely. [9]
The suspect was described as a 23- to 25-year-old man "of southern appearance". He was approximately 1.8 to 1.9 m. tall, had dark hair, and a three-day stubble. He was wearing jeans and a brown pullover. [1] [10] [11]
On 23 October, friends and relatives of Viktor E. mourned at the location of the murder. Some AfD supporters demonstrated as well; one of them was arrested. 70 left-wing protesters held a counter-demonstration. [10]
Davis Lewin of the Henry Jackson Society stated that the "profile of the attack fits to the new strategy of IS". He said it was "highly unlikely" that IS "jumps on an alien act of violence as a free rider". [12]
Außenalster or Outer Alster Lake is the larger one of two artificial lakes, which are formed by the Alster River and are both located within the city limits of Hamburg, Germany. The other „lake“ is the Binnenalster. The Außenalster and its shores are used by the inhabitants of Hamburg for many sport and recreational purposes, such as sailing and rowing.
Marwa Ali El-Sherbini, was an Egyptian woman and German resident who was killed in 2009 during an appeal hearing at a court of law in Dresden, Germany, when she was three months pregnant. She was stabbed by Alex Wiens, an ethnic German immigrant from Russia against whom she had testified in a criminal case for verbal abuse. El-Sherbini's husband, who was present at the hearing, tried to intervene. He too was repeatedly stabbed by Wiens and was then mistakenly shot and wounded by a police officer who was called to the court room. Wiens was arrested at the crime scene and subsequently tried for murder and attempted murder. He was found guilty of both charges; it was also found that Wiens's actions constituted a heinous crime, because they were committed in front of a child, against two people, in a court of law, and fulfilled the murder criterion of treacherousness, such as hatred against foreigners. Wiens was sentenced to life imprisonment.
The Hamburg Police is the German Landespolizei force for the city-state of Hamburg. Law enforcement in Germany is divided between federal and state (Land) agencies. A precursor to the agency, the Polizei-Behörde, has existed since 1814.
The National Socialist Underground murders were a series of racist murders by the German Neo-Nazi terrorist group National Socialist Underground. The NSU perpetrated the attacks between 2000 and 2007 throughout Germany, leaving ten people dead and one wounded. The primary targets were ethnic Turks, though the victims also included one ethnic Greek and one ethnic German policewoman.
The National Socialist Underground, or NSU, was a German neo-Nazi militant organization active between 2001 and 2010, and uncovered in November 2011. Regarded as a terror cell, the NSU is mostly associated with Uwe Mundlos, Uwe Böhnhardt and Beate Zschäpe, who lived together under false identities. Between 100 and 150 further associates were identified who supported the core trio in their decade-long underground life and provided them with money, false identities and weapons. Unlike other terror groups, the NSU had not claimed responsibility for their actions. The group's existence was discovered only after the deaths of Böhnhardt and Mundlos, and the subsequent arrest of Zschäpe.
During the 2015–2016 celebrations of New Year's Eve in Germany, approximately 1,200 women were reported to have been sexually assaulted, especially in the city of Cologne. In many of the incidents, while these women were in public spaces, they were surrounded and assaulted by large groups of men who were identified by officials as Arab or North African men. The Federal Criminal Police Office confirmed in July 2016 that 1,200 women had been sexually assaulted on that night.
On 24 July 2016, a Syrian asylum seeker armed with a döner knife attacked his girlfriend and bystanders in Reutlingen, Germany, killing his girlfriend, a Polish woman, and wounding two other people in the forearm and head, before being struck accidentally by a car and arrested by police.
Maria Ladenburger was a 19-year-old medical student from Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, who was found raped and drowned on 16 October 2016 in the river Dreisam. On 3 December 2016, Freiburg police arrested Hussein Khavari, who had been identified by a hair found at the crime scene, and a CCTV recording from inside a tram. DNA evidence linked him to the crime scene and he was ultimately convicted.
Bakery Jatta is a Gambian professional footballer who plays as a midfielder for 2. Bundesliga club Hamburger SV.
The Hanover stabbing that occurred on 26 February 2016 was a terrorist stabbing of a police officer in Hanover, Germany, by a 15-year-old girl born to a Moroccan mother and a German father. She had been raised under the influence of salafist preachings, as early as 7 years. She had been investigated by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution for preparing a serious crime already in 2014 and had traveled to meet ISIS members in Istanbul in November 2015. It was the first reported attack by an ISIS sympathiser in Germany.
The Murder of Mia Valentin was a fatal stabbing on 27 December 2017 in the town of Kandel in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. An Afghan asylum seeker, who had been denied refugee status, was charged with the murder of his 15-year-old German former girlfriend, allegedly after she ended the relationship. The case was reported in the national and international press and sparked a political debate about the German refugee policies, especially how to deal with underage unaccompanied refugees.
The Flensburg stabbing incident occurred on 30 May 2018, when a female police officer traveling off-duty on a high-speed train in Flensburg, Germany, was stabbed by an Eritrean man. He next attacked a male passenger who came to her aid. The perpetrator was then shot and killed by the police officer. The motive behind the stabbing was not clear. The man was a refugee, who had arrived in Germany in September 2015 and had a history of violent altrications. The incident was not considered terrorism.
The Göhrde murders were two double murders which took place in the summer of 1989 near Göhrde in Lower Saxony, West Germany. Within the space of a few weeks, two couples were found dead in the Göhrde State Forest, deemed by police to have been victims of the same killer. Although the murders remain unresolved, police announced in December 2017 that Kurt-Werner Wichmann, a suspected serial killer who committed suicide in 1993, was their prime suspect. Investigators have also speculated that another unknown person may be linked to the killings. The murders were widely reported on in the German press, and the area where they took place was largely avoided by members of the public for nearly thirty years.
On 13 October 2018, an 18-year-old woman was raped outside a discotheque in Freiburg, Germany by a series of men. In July 2020, eight perpetrators were convicted of rape, while two additional men were convicted for not aiding the victim. The case drew public attention, due in part to the refugee status of most of the perpetrators.
The Saw-Killer of Hanover is the name of an unidentified German serial killer, who is supposedly responsible for murdering and dismembering at least four women and two men, whose body parts were found in Hanover and the surrounding area in the 1970s. None of the victims have been identified, and the case is also referred to as The Found Corpses of Hanover. The "SOKO Torso" Unit of the Hanoverian police, directed by Commissioner Günter Nowatius, investigated the murders at the time.
The Hamburg rubble murderer is the name of an unidentified German serial killer, supposedly responsible for a series of murders in Hamburg during early 1947.
Siegfried Walter Rautenberg was a German waiter and suspected serial killer who was indicted for the murder of Monika Schwiegerhausen, a 22-year-old prostitute who worked at a red-light district in Hamburg, who was found drowned on 10 October 1968. In addition to this, he was also considered the prime suspect in the killings of two others committed months earlier. Rautenberg fled the country before he could be arrested and was later said to have died while serving in the Spanish Legion, but as his body was never recovered, this cannot be confirmed with certainty.
Werner Pinzner, also called "Mucki", was a German contract killer who became known as the "St. Pauli Killer". He was responsible for a series of contract killings and gained nationwide attention in 1986 when he fatally shot the investigating public prosecutor during interrogation and then killed his own wife before taking his own life at the Hamburg police headquarters. The case had political consequences in the city of Hamburg and is considered one of the most "spectacular" cases in the criminal history of the Federal Republic of Germany. Pinzner is also believed to have killed between seven and ten people before the Hamburg police headquarters incident.