A Somali man who stabbed three women to death in Würzburg, Bavaria, cannot be deported from Germany and will remain in psychiatric care in the country indefinitely.
The Attorney General’s Office in Munich’s prosecutors told German news site BR24 on October 31 that a release for his deportation over the 2021 atrocity was not possible “for the protection of the general public”.
The decision came after an expert opinion had concluded that a deporting the perpetrator came with a high risk of his re-entry to Germany, which might enable him to commit “further serious criminal offences”.
The prosecutors added that the Somali man would probably be set free in his home country and would be at liberty to re-enter Germany.
Previously, the Bavarian State Office for Asylum and Repatriation had confirmed it was investigating the possibility of deporting the man. That, though, would have necessitated the consent of the prosecutor’s office.
The Somali will now remain in the forensic psychiatric ward at a hospital in Lohr, a small town 30km northwest of Würzburg. He remains a danger to society, according to the Munich prosecutor’s office.
Hanjo Schrepfer, the man’s court-appointed defence lawyer, told press agency dpa: “I consider the decision of the Attorney General’s Office to be correct in terms of content and in my view this discretionary decision is also appropriate.”
He added that the progress of the man’s therapy must be monitored, although “strictly speaking” therapy could not yet be started because the defendant still had not admitted guilt.
On June 25, 2021 the then-24-year-old man, named as “Abdirahman Jibril A”, took a knife from a shelf at a department store in the centre of Würzburg, a city of 130,000 people, and started stabbing people seemingly at random.
He killed three women aged 25, 49, and 82, and injured at least nine other people. One of the victims died defending her 11-year-old daughter who the assailant also tried to stab. Witnesses later said the man had yelled “Allahu akbar” during the rampage.
The perpetrator reportedly arrived in Germany from Italy in May 2015 during the height of the German refugee crisis. He requested asylum, claiming he was persecuted by Islamist militias in Somalia. His request for asylum was denied but he still received subsidiary protection and was allowed to remain in Germany legally.
Before his killing spree he was living in a homeless shelter in Würzburg where he reportedly exhibited strange behaviour including threatening other people with knives multiple times.
He was briefly committed to a psychiatric ward but released after a short stay a couple of months before the attack.
