German police have arrested a young man who confessed to being responsible for the massacre that left three people dead in Solingen.
Der Spiegel reported that a 26-year-old Syrian named Isa al-H. surrendered to a police patrol on Saturday afternoon.
According to reports, the man’s clothes were dirty and had blood stains on them.
Bild reported that the man approached the police around 11:00 PM local time (midnight in Greece) and said, “I am the one you are looking for.” He is believed to have been hiding in a backyard since the attack late Friday at a festival in the city.
Regarding his background, Spiegel noted that he was born in the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor and arrived in Germany from Syria in December 2022. He had applied for asylum in Bielefeld and a year later received “subsidiary protection,” which is often granted to refugees from countries with ongoing civil conflicts.
He is a Sunni Muslim who had not previously been known to authorities as an Islamist extremist.
Raid on Refugee Shelter
Earlier on Saturday, dozens of officers from the elite SEK unit carried out a raid on a refugee shelter in Solingen, western Germany, in connection with the deadly attack.
The shelter is located just 300 meters from the site of the attack and 150 meters from where investigators found the knife used by the perpetrator to kill three people and seriously injure eight others on Friday night.
The perpetrator of the attack, who killed three people at a festival in the city on Friday night and injured eight others, managed to escape amidst the chaos and panic.
