(Deutsche Welle) A handful of isolated but high-profile incidents have put politically motivated crime high on Germany’s security agenda. The renewed fears follow a German tourist getting stabbed to death in Paris last weekend, allegedly by a man with a history of criminal behavior, mental illness and what prosecutors there have said is sympathy for the so-called Islamic State (IS).
The news has refreshed memories from 2016 when a man — also with an alleged IS affinity — drove a truck into a Berlin Christmas market. The attack killed 13 people, and the attacker was later gunned down by police in Italy.
A range of foreign and domestic actors currently confront Germany “with a complex and fraught threat situation due to parallel crises,” Thomas Haldenwang, the director general of German domestic intelligence (BfV), recently said in a statement.
