By SPIEGEL Staff
The attackers in Ansbach and
Würzburg lived inconspicuously in Germany for months. Evidence is mounting to
suggest that when they did act, they acted on instructions from the Islamic
State.
In order to earn a bit of
pocket money, Mohammad Daleel occasionally helped out as a cleaner at the Hotel
Christl. For his work, he was provided with a small allowance to augment the
320.14 euros ($358.43) a month he received in German government welfare
payments for asylum seekers.
The 27-year-old had seemed
"friendly and inconspicuous" during his visits to the social welfare
office, city officials say. A Pakistani resident at the refugee hostel where he
had lived, a converted inn, similarly only had innocuous things to report about
Daleel. He would chat with him in the hallway and then Daleel would return to
his room.
A week ago Monday, police
stormed the Hotel Christl. Among other things taken from Daleel's room,
officials confiscated chemicals used to make bombs, light bulbs to be used as
detonators and a role of cash with 50 euro bills. They also found two mobile
phones, multiple SIM cards and a laptop that had an Islamic State propaganda
video with beheading scenes saved on it.
Just a few hours prior, at 10
p.m. on Sunday evening, Daleel had detonated a homemade bomb at the entrance to
a music festival in the center of the Bavarian town of Ansbach. He died in the attack and 15 others were injured.
Lone Wolves or IS Operatives?
Authorities have been working
feverishly to investigate events in the run-up to the attack. As was the case
after the ax attack near Würzburg on the previous Monday, they are trying to
answer one question first and foremost: Was the perpetrator acting as a lone
wolf or on behalf of the Islamic State (IS) and with its support?
In both cases, more evidence
is emerging that suggests close links between the perpetrators and IS.
As the German federal prosecutor's investigation continues, it is becoming
clear that Daleel's seemingly tranquil life in Ansbach was nothing but a
facade. He only expressed his true self in his electronic communications,
either on his mobile phone or his computer, when he was alone in his room with
the blinds drawn.
A day after the attack, IS
propagandists celebrated Daleel as being one of their soldiers. It is now
becoming apparent that there is more to that statement than mere posturing,
because the perpetrator had been communicating with a person in the Middle East
until shortly before the attack using chat. The person knew about the
explosives and the planned attack and had been instructing Daleel on how he
could avoid the bag check at the festival entrance.
In the run-up to the attack,
Daleel must have already had contacts in the Middle East, based on the fact
that IS propagandists were in possession of the video in which Daleel swears
his allegiance to Iraqi IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
The fact that IS propagandists
were in possession of a video in which Daleel swore his allegiance to Iraqi IS
leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi suggests the soon-to-be terrorist must have already
had contacts in the Middle East in the run-up to the attack.
It's also unlikely Daleel
would have been able to produce a bomb without instructions. The materials he
used included a small loudspeaker and a bicycle lamp. He fastened the
explosives with the same kind of metal mounting claws used to affix insulation
panels.
Deportation Order Lifted
By the time of the attack,
Daleel had been living for almost two years in Ansbach. Although his
deportation to Bulgaria had been ordered, he was able to secure a stay order
due to psychological problems and injuries suffered after being struck by
shrapnel in the civil war in Syria.
Investigators are now trying
to determine whether IS deliberately recruited and instrumentalized an unstable
person or if Daleel had long been an Islamist and simply managed to deceive
German authorities.
Either way, the label of the
quickly self-radicalizing perpetrator doesn't fit Daleel. The Ansbach attack
had been planned in advance. The same is true of events near Würzburg, where
17-year-old Afghan Riaz Khan A. attacked five people with an ax on July 18.
Investigators say that Riaz
Khan A. also had contact with a person in the Middle East who is believed to be
linked to IS. This was determined after analyzing partly encrypted computer
storage devices. They say A. transmitted his video claiming responsibility for
the attack to IS via Facebook.
In the days leading up to the
attack, A. was on the phone a lot, reportedly having told his foster parents in
the village of Gaukönigshofen that a friend in Afghanistan had died.
But he may have used the
opportunity to communicate undisturbed before carrying out his attack. In
Kolpinghaus Ochsenfurt, where A. had lived until two weeks before the attack,
he had shared a room with someone. Before that, until July 2015, he had lived
in a gymnasium in the city of Passau that had been converted into an emergency
refugee shelter.
He had also been under
observation since June after witnesses claimed he had pulled a knife on another
youth during an unsettled dispute over a video game console. Another time he
got into a tussle with a male resident.
Despite this, officials at the
youth welfare office in Würzburg had a good overall impression of the young
Afghan. He made a "very positive, altruistic, motivated and open"
impression, according to the office. His guardian said he had shown "very
good progress."
Other refugees in Ansbach and
Würzburg are struggling to grasp how the perpetrators could have committed such
acts. "We have been given everything," says Daleel's Pakistani
neighbor in the former Hotel Christl in Ansbach. "Accommodations, food,
money."
How could anyone even think of
planning an attack under these circumstances? "The German
government," the neighbor says, "has been like a caring mother to
us."
Reported by Anna Clauss, Jörg
Diehl, Jan Friedmann, Sven Röbel and Andreas Ulrich
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