Indictment Filed for Attempted Murder at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin

Year of issue 2025
Date 29.07.2025

On 18 July 2025, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office filed an indictment against the

Syrian national Wassim Al M.

before the State Security Chamber of the Berlin Higher Regional Court (Kammergericht).

There are sufficient grounds to suspect the accused of attempted murder (section 211 para. 2, sections 22, 23 of the German Criminal Code [StGB]) as a young adult (section 1, 105 of the Youth Courts Act). The act of attempted murder is considered to have been committed out of base motives and with perfidiousness. In this context, he is also charged with dangerous bodily harm (section 223 para. 1, section 224 para. 1 nos. 2 and 5), and attempted membership of a foreign terrorist organisation (section 129a para. 1 no. 1 StGB, section 129b para. 1 sentences 1 and 2 StGB).

In essence, the indictment sets out the following allegations:

Wassim Al M. shares the ideology of the foreign terrorist organisation “Islamic State”. Driven by his radical Islamist and anti-Semitic ideology, he decided to travel from Leipzig to Berlin on 21 February 2025 to carry out a knife attack on supposed infidels whom he regarded as representatives of Western society, which he rejects. In the early evening of that same day, he attacked a person from behind with a knife in the field of stelae at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin-Mitte, injuring them critically.

Shortly before the incident, the accused had sent a picture of himself to members of the “Islamic State” via a messenger service to give the organisation the possibility to claim responsibility for the attack.

On 21 February 2025, the accused had been taken into custody and remains in pre-trial detention (see Press Releases nos. 15 and 18 of 24 and 28 February 2025).