BERLIN — The German police said Saturday that the 26-year-old man accused of killing one person and wounding five others with a knife in Hamburg was known to them as a recently radicalized Islamist, but that they did not believe he posed an imminent danger.

The authorities in Hamburg were still piecing together what motivated the man, a Palestinian born in the United Arab Emirates, to attack shoppers and passers-by in and around a supermarket on Friday. They described him as suffering from psychological problems. The authorities did not release his name, in keeping with German privacy laws.

“It remains unclear which was the overriding element,” said Andy Grote, Hamburg’s interior minister. The man’s application for asylum had been rejected, and he was in the process of being deported, officials said.

The authorities said that they had so far found no indication that the man had any links to local or international terrorist groups, but that they were still looking into his background.