Man who killed himself and injured 12 when he detonated rucksack outside music event in Germany had application refused

A 27-year-old Syrian man who killed himself and injured 15 others when he detonated a rucksack of explosives outside a music festival in southern Germany was due to be deported to Bulgaria after having his application for asylum turned down.

Bavaria’s interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, said his personal opinion was that the attack in Ansbach appeared to have been driven by Islamic extremism, but other authorities cautioned against a rush to judgment.

“My personal view is that I unfortunately think it’s very likely this really was an Islamist suicide attack,” Herrmann said. However, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office in Ansbach said the attacker’s motive was unclear. “Whether there is an Islamist link or not is purely speculation at this point,” said Michael Schrotberger.

A federal interior ministry spokesman said he could not yet say why the suspect, who arrived in Germany two years ago and whose asylum application was turned down a year ago, had not been deported. He was to be sent back to Bulgaria under the Dublin regulation, which stipulates that a refugee’s EU country of first contact is responsible for processing his or her asylum request.

Germany suspended the Dublin regulation rules last August, saying they were not working. The suspect, who has not yet been identified, is believed to have been granted temporary leave to stay in Germany due to the civil war in his home country.

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The attack comes two days after a gunman killed nine people in the Bavarian city of Munich and a week after a man attacked train passengers with an axe in Würzburg, also in Bavaria. The three incidents have plunged Germany in general and the south-eastern state in particular into an acute state of nervousness and prompted probing questions about the extent to which Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door policy towards refugees last summer might be to blame.

In another incident on Sunday, a 21-year-old Syrian killed a 45-year-old pregnant Polish woman with a knife in Reutlingen, in the state of Baden-Württemberg. Police said there were no indications pointing to terrorism and the attacker appeared to have known the woman he killed.

The Ansbach attack happened at about 10.10pm local time in the entrance of a wine bar at the Ansbach Open festival. The man tried to enter the festival grounds but was turned back because he had no ticket. He immediately detonated the explosives in his rucksack.

“Had he managed to get into the festival, there would certainly have been more victims,” Nuremberg’s deputy head of police, Roman Fertinger, said. The man’s rucksack contained the types of metal items used in wood work and available a DIY stores.



Four of the 15 injured people have serious injuries, Ansbach’s mayor, Carda Seidel, said on Monday. No one suffered any life-threatening injuries, she added, and most of the injuries came from splinters.

The festival was called off after the attack and 2,000 people were sent home.



Germany’s interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, who has twice had to return from a family holiday in the US to respond to violent incidents in Germany, is due to hold a press conference at 3pm local time.

In a statement, De Maizière said: “The acts of violence in Reutlingen and Ansbach have shocked me once again. My sympathy is with the relatives of the victims and the injured. The investigation is firing on all cylinders. I hope we will soon get certainty about the attacker’s motives.”

The Syrian asylum seeker was known to have suffered from depression. Police said he was known to them following his arrest for a mild drug offence, as well as two attempts at suicide to which they were called.

Forensic teams were scouring the man’s flat for clues to his possible motivation, in particular whether he might have been radicalised.

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The government department responsible for migrants and refugees was expected to give more information later in the day as to why the man’s asylum application had been turned down. Since last summer, when Merkel said no one from Syria would be turned away, it is highly unusual for a Syrian citizen to not receive asylum in Germany.

Herrmann said it was unfathomable that someone who had come to Germany two years ago looking for refuge had carried out the attack. “It’s terrible … that someone who came to our country to seek shelter has now committed such a heinous act and injured a large number of people who live here, some seriously,” he said. “It’s a further horrific attack that will increase the already growing security concerns of our citizens. We must do everything possible to prevent the spread of such violence in our country by people who came here to ask for asylum.”

There were renewed calls on Monday for tighter controls over the identity of refugees arriving in Germany.

Rainer Wendt, of the main police trade union, said: “We’re experiencing these days that mental instability, terrorism and criminality are intermingled. It’s all the more important that we don’t just give shelter and care to people but ensure we know exactly who is coming into our country, and take a closer look whether they pose a possible threat.”