Friday, July 20, 2018

UPDATED: "Allahu akbar!" in Merkeland... again?

Walt can't be certain on this one, since die Polizei are being characteristically tight-lipped [and ashen-faced? Ed.], but initial reporters out of Lübeck, Germany, suggest that a terror attack in which 12 people were injured may be the work of a fanatcial Islamist. No-one has yet reported hearing cries of "Allahu akbar!" but German media are under instructions not to publish mere details like that, for fear of provoking still more Islamphopbia amongst a people sick, sore and tired or Angela Merkel's Willkommenskultur.

The local paper, Lübecker Nachrichten reports that a suspect attacked passengers with a knife onboard a busy bus, in the Kücknitz district of the northern German city. Inspektor Katzenjammer of the state police said that authorities were still trying to determine the circumstances of the attack. "Nobody was killed," a press release stated. "The perpetrator was overpowered and is now in police custody."

AP quoted Ulla Hingst, a spokesthingy for state prosecutors, as saying that police are investigating a suspicious rucksack. "Nothing can be ruled out, including a terrorist background," she said. The local cops tweeted, "We ask for your understanding that we cannot provide any information about the identity of the suspect at the moment."

No "authorities" -- prosecutors, police, first responders or anyone else -- has dared to whisper words like "asylum-seeker", "refugee", "North African", "Muslim", or "Islamic terrorist". Walt is surely not the only person, though, who remembers that, in December 2016, 12 people were killed in Berlin when a Tunisian with links to Islamist militants ploughed into a crowded Christmas marketplace. Walt predicts that a similar connection will be revealed in this case... but later... and very quietly. Lifetime pct .990.

UPDATE ADDED 21/7/18: Die Polizei today issued a statement (on Twitter!) as follows: "The identity of the perpetrator has been clarified: a 34-year-old German citizen resident in Lübeck. There are currently no indications the man was political radicalized and no signs of a terrorist background." They later clarified that the suspect was a German citizen who was born in, errr, Iran. So that's all right then.

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