German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) visited the scene of the attack on Saturday, a day after his appearance at the Munich Security Conference, where a man drove a car into a crowd on Thursday, injuring 39 people, some of them seriously. Scholz, accompanied by Minister of Transport Volker Wissing (independent) and Munich’s Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD), initially laid a white rose at the site of the incident, before speaking with emergency responders.
In a subsequent press statement, the Chancellor once again called for harsh punishment for the perpetrator, stating that criminal foreigners should be deported. The suspect, a 24-year-old Afghan, had his asylum application rejected in 2020, but his deportation was set aside. He later received a residence permit. Investigators believe the attack was motivated by Islamist ideology and the General Public Prosecutor’s Office has since taken over the case at the Federal Court of Justice.