A Syrian migrant has been jailed for life for attempted murder after seriously wounding four people in an Islamist-motivated knife attack outside a bar in western Germany.
The Higher Regional Court in Düsseldorf found that the 36-year-old, identified under German privacy rules only as Mahmoud M., was “driven by a radical jihadist mindset” when he carried out the assault. The attack took place on May 18, 2025, targeting football fans gathered outside a bar in the city of Bielefeld.
Carrying a hand-drawn Islamic State (IS) flag, he set out to attack the victims as representatives of Western society and to kill as many people as possible, the court said.
He used a modified walking stick fitted with an 18cm blade, prosecutors said. He wounded three people seriously before a fourth man tackled him, suffering serious injuries while overpowering the attacker.
The man fled the scene but was arrested near Düsseldorf the following day after a relative alerted police. The case was handed to federal prosecutors because of the apparent Islamist motive.
He was found guilty of four counts of attempted murder and other offences. The court ruled that he would remain in preventive detention if his sentence ends early, citing the gravity of his crimes.
The court noted that Mahmoud M. had repeatedly rejected the freedom-oriented way of life of Western societies and backed IS’s view that violent jihad against non-believers must be waged worldwide.
He belonged to IS in Syria from 2015 to 2016, operating in units around his home city of Raqqa. He has also told investigators he killed two people in Syria for the group, including his half-brother.
He fled to Turkey and arrived in Germany as an asylum seeker in 2023, where he consumed media glorifying IS and its ideology, the court said.
Islamist attacks have fuelled a heated debate about immigration in Germany in recent years.
The deadliest was a truck rampage at a Berlin Christmas market in December 2016 that killed 12 people.
In August 2024, a Syrian man stabbed festival-goers in the western city of Solingen, killing three people and wounding eight. He was convicted of murder and IS membership and sentenced to life in September 2025.
An Afghan man was also recently jailed for life over a jihadist stabbing in the southwestern city of Mannheim that killed a police officer and wounded five people.
