Further suspect held over Berlin Holocaust memorial attack

BERLIN — German police on Wednesday arrested a man suspected of encouraging a jihadist-inspired knife attack on a Spanish tourist at Berlin's Holocaust memorial last year.

A 20-year-old Syrian man named only as Wassim Al M. was jailed in March for 13 years for the attack in which he stabbed and seriously injured the tourist.

The February 2025 assault inflamed an already heated debate on immigration just a few days before a general election in Germany.

On Wednesday, prosecutors said another Syrian national, named as Khalaf A., had been arrested on suspicion of "aiding and abetting attempted murder and serious bodily harm".

Khalaf A. is alleged to have spent the afternoon preceding the stabbing with Wassim Al M. and to have encouraged him to commit the attack.

The judge who presided over Wassim Al M.'s conviction in March said that he committed the crime "in the name of the Islamic State group" and had been looking to target "Israelis or people of the Jewish faith".

The attacker approached the victim from behind among the concrete steles of the memorial and inflicted a 14-centimetre (more than five-inch) cut to his throat, the judge said.

The victim only survived because the knife missed major blood vessels by a few millimetres.

Wassim Al M. confessed to the crime and told the court through his lawyer that he felt "shame" for his actions.