The Bavarian Interior Minister, Joachim Herrmann, has provided further details on the attacker in the Schöntal Park in Aschaffenburg at a press conference. The 28-year-old Afghan man, who arrived in Germany on November 19, 2022, and filed an asylum application in early 2023, apparently entered the country through another EU state that was originally responsible for the asylum process. This suggests that the Dublin procedure was not completed in a timely manner, according to Herrmann’s statement.
During his more than two years in Germany, the man was hospitalized three times for violent behavior, but was released each time. On December 4, 2024, he told authorities he was willing to leave voluntarily, prompting the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees to end the asylum process and request his departure on December 11. Simultaneously, the Aschaffenburg District Court ordered the man’s guardianship and appointed a guardian for him, despite his continued psychiatric treatment. No religious items were found at his asylum seeker’s residence, only the medication used to treat his mental illness.
The two-year-old child, of Moroccan descent, who was killed, and a Syrian girl, an educator, and a 61-year-old man, who were all injured, are being treated in the hospital. According to Herrmann, not only the 41-year-old German man, who attempted to protect the children and lost his life in the process, intervened. The attacker was quickly apprehended due to the pursuit by several onlookers.
Similarly, the 2021 Würzburg attacker, an asylum seeker from Somalia, who killed two women and a girl, had a history of psychiatric treatment before the attack. He was found not to be criminally responsible and is now permanently institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital. It is likely that the procedure against the Afghan attacker will end similarly.
The Würzburg attacker had been released from the psychiatric hospital a few days before the attack, after being admitted in January of that year. The hospital later stated that they had not seen any acute risk of self-harm or harm to others and had therefore released him.
Details about the psychiatric history of the Aschaffenburg attacker are still unknown. However, the prelude to the attack bears a striking resemblance to the Würzburg case, which is not insignificant, as the regional authorities in Bavaria are responsible for the psychiatric hospitals, and both cities are located in the Regierungsbezirk of Unterfranken. This could suggest that the lessons learned from the Würzburg case were not applied in this instance.