2024 Solingen stabbing

The attack occurred during an event called the Festival of Diversity (), a three-day event from 23 to 25 August celebrating Solingen's 650th anniversary. It had been billed as turning the city center into a big "celebration mile" from the public squares the to the . The incident took place at the , a central square and marketplace in the heart of the city, where three stages had been set up for live music performances. Prior to the stabbing, there was a 10% annual rise in knife attacks in Germany, particularly in city centers and at railway stations. Interior minister Nancy Faeser earlier in August 2024 told public broadcaster ARD that more stringent restrictions were needed on knives in public places, with exceptions only for household knives in closed packaging that have just been bought. == Attack ==

The attack occurred around 21:40 in front of the main stage during an ongoing performance by a local band. A man stabbed several people, with the majority suffering wounds to the neck. Three were killed and eight others were injured. DJ Topic, performing at the time of the attack, said he had been asked by security to continue his set to prevent mass panic. Investigation and manhunt North Rhine-Westphalia Police immediately considered the possibility of terrorism as a motive for the attack and believed they were dealing with a single attacker. An online forum was created on the NRW Police website the same night to collect digital images and video from witnesses. A statement by Düsseldorf public prosecutor's office the following day announced that the investigation was treating the stabbing as a terror attack. A major alert was issued, followed by a statewide manhunt. Armed officers were on site, having cordoned off large sections of the city, with barriers in place across various locations. This was the first time that ISIS had claimed responsibility for a terrorist attack on German soil since the 2016 Berlin truck attack. As of 29 August 2024, North Rhine-Westphalia's interior minister Herbert Reul stated that the man could not certainly be identified as the actual perpetrator, nor could direct ISIS involvement be confirmed. Due to security concerns, the remainder of the festival was canceled, A 15-year-old was arrested in connection with the case, with authorities stating he was seen speaking with the perpetrator moments before the attack. The teenager is not the primary suspect but is alleged to have known about the attack without reporting it to authorities. Nearly 26 hours after the stabbing, His whereabouts in the time between the stabbing and the arrest, and whether he had spoken to anybody and what he had done in that time remained unclear as of early September 2024. == Victims ==

The three dead victims were identified as 67-year-old Stefan Schulz, 56-year-old Ines Wallusch, and 56-year-old Florian H., the former two locals to Solingen while H. was a regular commuter from Düsseldorf. One of the injured witnesses told police he recognised the assailant as a regular visitor of a local mosque. The eight injured were treated at Solingen Clinic. All four of the severely wounded were in stable condition by 26 August. == Perpetrator ==

The attacker was identified as 26-year-old Issa al Hassan (). He was born in 1998 in Deir ez-Zor to a family of farmers. Al Hassan left school in the eighth grade and worked in agriculture. In 2015, at age 17, he moved to the outskirts of Al-Tabqah, which was under the control of the Islamic State (ISIS). He lived there for four years before moving to live with his brothers in Tell Abyad, which lies directly on the border to Turkey. He left Syria in November 2022, reportedly at the wish of his family to avoid potential entry into ISIS. According to his sister, Al Hassan was not religious of his Sunni faith and did not observe Ramadan. Via Turkey, he arrived in Bulgaria on 7 December 2022 and was registered as a refugee, but left his accommodation in Busmantsi without notice after a week. The same month, Al Hassan traveled to Bochum, Germany, and on 27 January 2023, he filed an asylum application in Bielefeld, in which he named several reasons for his immigration, including fears of conscription into the Syrian Arab Armed Forces, opposition to the Assad government's actions in the Rojava conflict and to financially support his family. Al Hassan's application was denied in February 2023 since he was registered in Bulgaria and based on the Dublin Regulation, he was to be deported there to receive asylum status. Because he was not known to be dangerous, authorities did not issue a warrant for his arrest after the abortive attempt at deportation. No second attempt at deportation was made. With the six-months deadline for the return having run out a few days before his August reappearance, Germany was now responsible for processing his asylum claim. He was granted subsidiary protection in late 2023 and was assigned accommodation in Solingen. The accommodation was located 300 meters from the later attack site and a search of the building showed that the knife used in the stabbing had been taken from the communal kitchen. Al Hassan had not been identified by authorities as an Islamic extremist prior to the attack. After Al Hassan's arrest, the Public Prosecutor General took over the investigation on suspicion of a terrorist offence or politically motivated crime. On 25 August, Al Hassan was remanded in pre-trial custody on suspicion of murder and membership of ISIS, among other charges. Initially named only as Issa al H. due to German privacy laws, his full name became public within hours and was continually published in the press. Al Hassan was formally charged with murder, attempted murder and membership in an overseas terrorist organization on 27 February 2025. At his trial he admitted the killings. In September 2025, Al Hassan received a life sentence, including for murder, to be followed by preventive detention. == Reactions ==

, Minister-President and others laid flowers on 26August Minister of the Interior of North Rhine-Westphalia Herbert Reul, who traveled to Solingen on the night of the attack, warned against speculation about the perpetrator, saying that it was as yet impossible to say anything about him or his motives. Reul, Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser and North Rhine-Westphalia minister president Hendrik Wüst visited the crime scene on 24 August. Solingen's mayor, Tim Kurzbach, wrote a post about the attack on the city's Facebook page, saying that "This evening, we are all in shock, horror and great sadness in Solingen. We all wanted to celebrate our city's anniversary together and now we have to mourn the dead and injured." He also thanked all emergency services that responded to the attack. After the attack, the political debate about concrete consequences first centred around making the German weapons law more stringent. Vice-chancellor Robert Habeck of the Greens expressed support for such a measure, while saying it was uncertain if this could have prevented the attack. The debate shifted after it transpired that the suspect is a rejected asylum seeker. Fellow SPD chief Saskia Esken said in early September that lessons should be drawn from the attack, after previous statements by her to the extent that there was nothing much to learn from it, as the alleged perpetrator had not been known to police, had widely been criticized. Esken expressed preference for better enforcement of existing asylum legislation over tightening it. She also called for requiring social media companies to control content. The far-right party Alternative for Germany blamed not only the ruling coalition but also the CDU/CSU opposition for alleged shortcomings on security, linking it with immigration even before the identity of the assailant was released. On 26 August, chancellor Olaf Scholz described the attack as "terrorism, terrorism against us all" during a visit to Solingen. He emphasised the need for his government to ensure that individuals who should not be in Germany are repatriated and deported, with a focus on accelerating the process if needed. He also committed to promptly strengthening regulations on weapon ownership. Two draft laws were introduced by the government on 12 September, which covered extending knife prohibitions, reducing state support to certain refugees, and extending powers of authorities in fighting terrorism. On 30 August, Germany deported 28 Afghan nationals to Afghanistan after two months of negotiations with Qatar as a mediator. All individuals were males and convicted criminals, and each received €1,000. Influenced by the stabbing, the state of Thuringia in late August granted its district governments the right to declare no-weapons zones in certain public places, and Bavaria declared in early September its intention to do the same. Similar measures had already been taken in other German states years before the stabbing. Criminologist Dirk Baier of the Zurich University of Applied Sciences warned that stricter laws were unlikely to root out knife assaults, saying that they were ineffective against young perpetrators and that there had to be enough checking personnel in the proposed weapons-ban zones. He called the stabbings a "social problem" that had to be addressed with social measures. When interviewed by the press service of the Evangelical Church in Germany, social psychologist Andreas Zick of the University of Bielefeld called for a thorough analysis of the terror, a deepened analysis of potential perpetrators, a careful assessment of options for the possibility of implementation from a legal viewpoint – something that he saw as having been neglected by parties in the middle of the political spectrum in the past –, and most of all, care for the victims and their relatives. The Gaza war had, according to Zick, already increased the risk of violence in Germany and other European countries. He said that the Solingen attack would yield information on where the violence came from and which old and new ideologies played a role in this. The government measures to reduce support for rejected asylum seekers as announced on 29 August, were watered down by SPD and Green party MPs who stated that they wanted to prevent rejected asylum seekers from becoming homeless and impoverished. After the new regulation from mid October, support can now only be stopped if there are no obstacles blocking rejected asylum seekers from leaving. After a meeting of the Bundestag's interior ministry committee, where the changes were discussed, opposition members called the measures "pointless" while a police union representative called them a "mockery" of the victims of Solingen. Josefine Paul, Minister for Children, Youth, Family, Equality, Refugees and Integration in NRW since 2022, declared on 27 January 2026 she would give up the office. Pressure on her had been rising in the days before her decision, after an SMS surfaced she allegedly sent a day after the stabbing, in which she asked her staff details about Issa al Hassan. At the same time, she made no public statements regarding the attack for several days, while being on a working visit to France. The opposition had complained, that the SMS in question had not been made available for the committee of inquiry beforehand. == See also ==