The man who tried to assassinate a pro-migrant mayoral candidate in Cologne may have been connected to Germany’s secret service, the Green Party has claimed.

The man, known as Frank S, stabbed Henriette Reker the day before the mayoral election. He was immediately arrested and state prosecutors say he confessed to holding “xenophobic motives”. They added that they had not ruled out mental instability as a motive too.

However, Green MP Volker Beck pointed out that information held by the Federal Employment Agency on Frank S had been classified as “secret”.

He told tabloid Bild: “That fact the documents on Frank S were classified as secret at the Federal Employment Agency makes us suspicious.

“We would expect all information held by local and national security services regarding Frank S to be disclosed by the Federal Government.”

The Green party has now submitted a formal question to the government, asking them if there are “any current or past links” between the secret services and Frank S.

The Left Party has also waded in, saying it is “not credible that the secret services would have no knowledge of a serial Nazi with a very clear record.”

Henriette Reker, an independent who was previously responsible for handling migrant-related issues in Cologne, was stabbed in the neck last Saturday while campaigning. She survived the attack, and was elected mayor with 52.7 per cent of the vote the day after the stabbing.

Although she stood as an independent, Mrs. Reker is very close to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and Mrs. Merkel herself called the local CDU offices to offer Mrs. Reker her wishes for a speedy recovery.

Recently, it was revealed that one of the founders of anti-Islamist group “Hooligans Against Salafism” (Hogesa) was a secret service informant who spent years forwarding the group’s emails to state authorities.