A Berlin court has sentenced a 20-year-old Syrian immigrant to 13 years in prison for a stabbing attack on a tourist at the German capital’s Holocaust memorial.
The court found the accused guilty of attempted murder and attempted membership of a foreign terrorist organisation, as the man had acted in allegiance to radical Islamist group Islamic State (IS).
On February 21, 2025, the Syrian had travelled to Berlin from Leipzig in Saxony. He had come to Germany in 2023 as a refugee and had been living in a shelter in Leipzig since then.
In Berlin, the man went to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a 1.9 hectare site in the city centre covered with over 2,700 concrete monuments. The holocaust memorial is one of the most-visited tourist sites in the German capital.
The Syrian crept up to a 30-year-old Spanish tourist from behind, produced a knife and slashed the man’s throat.
According to the court the Spaniard survived only because the knife had missed vital blood vessels by mere millimetres. One year after the attack he is still unable to work and is undergoing psychological treatment.
The Syrian terrorist claimed he had felt remorse “one second after the act” and said he had been pressured into the attack by an online chat partner he had met through IS videos.
The Berlin case is not the only high-profile terrorism trial in Germany currently under way.
In Magdeburg (Saxony-Anhalt) the proceedings against Saudi Arabian former doctor Taleb al-Abdulmohsen have been going on since November 2025 and will still take at least until this summer as the court recently announced.
Al-Abdulmohsen allegedly drove a BMW 4×4 through masses of visitors at the Magdeburg Christmas market in December 2024.
The trial is costing the public close to €6 million, as the state of Saxony-Anhalt had a special courtroom hall with 400 places just for the trial.
According to newspaper Bild the construction of the “pop-up court” cost €1.7 million, its dismantling after the verdict will cost another €400.000. In addition, the state is paying €390,000 in monthly rent for the structure.
State justice minister Franziska Weidinger said at the opening of the trial: “It is our constitutional duty to conduct such proceedings professionally and in accordance with the law. Costs are therefore not a priority.”
Right-wing pundit Georg Pazderski accused the authorities of giving the attacker a “platform for self-aggrandisement”, calling it “a farce at the expense of the victims”.
