A suspected Islamist attacked a police station in the north of Rhineland-Palatinate. The 29-year-old, armed with a machete and a knife, was locked in a security gate and then overpowered by special forces, investigators said. Police officers were not injured in the attack.

According to investigators, the man appeared at the police station in Linz am Rhein at 2:40 a.m. He repeatedly shouted “Allahu Akbar” (“God is great”) and announced that he wanted to kill police officers. Jihadists and Salafists often use the expression “Allahu Akbar” as a battle cry. The extremists are thus hijacking the central religious formula of Islam, which has been used by Muslims around the world for centuries. Linz am Rhein is a city in the Neuwied district in the north of Rhineland-Palatinate, not far from the state border with North Rhine-Westphalia.

Considerable damage after the machete attack on the police station in Linz am Rhein. Photo: IMAGO / Alexander Franz

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Arrest in security gate

The police officers locked the entrance door and the door to the inner courtyard of the police station so that the man could not escape or attack anyone. Special forces arrested the suspect in the sealed security gate. They incapacitated him with an electric shock from a taser. The Albanian citizen was slightly injured. A judge at the Koblenz district court later ordered him to be remanded in custody on suspicion of attempted murder.

The Rhineland-Palatinate Interior Minister Michael Ebling (SPD) condemned the attack and said that the police had ended it very resolutely and consistently. Fortunately, nothing happened to the officers. The offices were well secured, but awareness was raised again on Friday.

Flag of the Islamic State found

After the attack, investigators found a flag of the terrorist organization Islamic State drawn on the wall during a search of the apartment. Because of the indications of a radical Islamist motive, the Rhineland-Palatinate State Central Office for Combating Terrorism and Extremism at the Koblenz Public Prosecutor’s Office took over the investigation. The judiciary is conducting the investigation as an attempted murder, said Ebling.

This is the most serious accusation that can be made in this case. The authorities had no knowledge of the perpetrator’s background before the attack on the police station. Now there is “more than one indication that the perpetrator was obviously motivated by radical Islamism.”

Further attack on Munich and Solingen

On Thursday, an 18-year-old Austrian was killed by police in an attack on the Israeli Consulate General in Munich. The Austrian authorities had investigated the man on suspicion that he may have become religiously radicalized. Investigators in Munich are following up on evidence that the perpetrator had an Islamist or anti-Semitic motive. In a suspected Islamist terrorist attack in Solingen on August 23, a man killed three people with a knife and injured eight others at a town festival. The suspected perpetrator, a 26-year-old Syrian, is in custody.