Germany: Another foe of mass Muslim migration stabbed in Mannheim

The perpetrator has been admitted to a psychiatric hospital. After all, what could he possibly be but mentally ill? A leftist or Muslim who hates dissent and wants to crush it? Pshaw!

“‘I wanted to catch him’ – AfD politician pursues poster thief and is injured,” translated from “„Ich wollte ihn stellen“ – AfD-Politiker verfolgt Plakatdieb und wird verletzt,” Welt, June 5, 2024:

Another knife attack in Mannheim: An AfD local politician catches a poster tearer and is injured. He suffers cuts to his ear and stomach. The perpetrator was arrested and has since been admitted to a psychiatric hospital.

AfD local council candidate Heinrich Koch was injured with a knife in Mannheim while pursuing an election poster thief. A 25-year-old suspect was caught and, according to investigators, taken to a psychiatric hospital. There were clear indications of mental illness when he was arrested, police and the public prosecutor’s office announced on Wednesday. The AfD politician was not critically injured.

“According to the current state of the investigation, there is no concrete evidence that the suspect recognized during the attack that the victim was an AfD politician.” Koch himself assumes a political motive.

What happened?
According to the AfD district association, the incident occurred near the market square in the Rheinau district of Mannheim at 10:45 p.m. on Tuesday evening. According to the police, the AfD candidate for the local council caught several poster tearers red-handed. According to the AfD, a total of three people were involved, two managed to escape. The suspects “ripped down” election posters all over the square, said Heinrich Koch.

He discovered the men after an event. He asked bystanders to inform the police, then he followed the man with the posters. “I thought I just had to catch them.” When he caught the man, the attack took place. The 25-year-old suspect is said to have injured the pursuer with a cutter knife. The alleged perpetrator then fled. Police were later able to arrest him without resistance, it was said.

A video filmed by the injured AfD candidate himself shows the filmmaker running after a younger man across the market square and shouting “Stop! Stop!”

The AfD candidate Heinrich Koch was attacked and injured with a knife in Mannheim. A video from the AfD is said to show how the 62-year-old politician catches a man tearing down a poster before the scene escalates. Reporter Anna-Marleen Howe reports.

The younger man is carrying several AfD election posters under his arm and is believed to have a carpet knife in his hand. “Lie down immediately,” shouts the person filming. A scuffle then ensues. You can see the man swinging the knife, the rest of the images are blurry.

How is Koch?

The AfD politician was taken to a nearby hospital. “He did not suffer life-threatening injuries,” said the police and public prosecutor. According to the “Bild” newspaper, he suffered cuts that required stitches.

Koch spoke out after being released from the hospital. He had turned on his cell phone video – “also for his own safety.” At first he did not realize that the young man with the posters had a knife in his hand, but then he automatically protected himself and turned away. He did not initially notice the cuts on his ear and stomach. “I did not notice that in the adrenaline rush, I wanted to confront him.”

Koch stated that he was a paratrooper officer as a lieutenant colonel in the reserves and had received training in close combat. He is in third place for the AfD in the local council elections on June 9.

Who is responsible for the attack?
The AfD had initially spoken of an attack by left-wing extremists – there was no mention of this in the investigators’ statement later. The chairman of the AfD parliamentary group in the Baden-Württemberg state parliament, Anton Baron, assessed the incident as an expression of totalitarian power fantasies: “Whether Islamism or left-wing extremism – anyone who neither accepts freedom of expression nor has reasonable arguments is now reaching for a knife. This is dismaying and shows how deeply the division in our society has progressed.”

How are politicians reacting?

In an interview with WELT TV, AfD leader Tino Chrupalla blamed the “division in society” for attacks on politicians. He would like to see a strong statement from Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, “who can finally contribute to unity in this country, and not to further division.”

Chrupalla sees the AfD as the main target of politically motivated violence. He called on the parties to exercise moderation in the election campaign. “When I address all parties, I naturally mean us too,” he stressed. “And of course that is also a call to our party friends and colleagues to disarm verbally.”

“We are shocked and dismayed,” said AfD state leader Markus Frohnmaier about the attack. AfD leader Alice Weidel criticized the traffic light coalition and the media. “With their agitation against the opposition, the Ampel and the media are creating a climate in which even extreme physical attacks are no longer shied away from,” she wrote on the X platform. “We condemn this violence and call for a return to the minimum democratic practices!”

Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD) condemned the act: “There is never a justification for violence. I wish the injured man a good and full recovery and thank the police for their quick intervention.”

Mannheim’s mayor Christian Specht (CDU) also criticized the attack: “This cowardly act is abhorrent and cannot be justified in any way.”

Just last Friday there was a fatal knife attack in Mannheim (Baden-Württemberg). A 25-year-old Afghan attacked several people at an event organized by the anti-Islam movement Pax Europa (BPE) in the city center. A police officer was critically injured by knife wounds and later died of his injuries in hospital.

In recent weeks, numerous attacks on politicians have caused a stir. Among others, SPD campaigner Matthias Ecke was beaten so badly in Dresden that he had to be hospitalized.