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Palestinian terrorist sentenced to life for German stabbing attack

Palestinian terrorist Ahmad Alhaw had sought and failed to receive asylum in Germany, and was registered in the intelligence system as an Islamist.

By: Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Ahmad Alhaw, 27, was sentenced to life in prison in a German court on Thursday for knifing one person to death and injuring six in a Hamburg supermarket last July. He had admitted the charges, with the prosecutor telling the court at the time that his motive “had some connection with events on the Temple Mount” in Jerusalem.

His assault took place soon after Israeli authorities had installed metal detectors at the entrance to the Mount following a terrorist attack there in which two border policemen were killed. The metal detectors were subsequently removed due to pressure on the government.

When passing sentence on the killer, the judge noted the “particular severity” of the crime, which was seen as a sign that Alhaw might actually sit in jail for decades. In general, a life sentence in Germany means 15 years in prison, since parole is often granted.

Prosecutors had said that Alhaw had a “radical Islamist” motive for the attack. At the trial, a psychiatrist who had examined the defendant told the court that by 2016 Alhaw started looking at all other people as either true believers or non-believers, and said that the attack had not been his decision, but God’s will.

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“It was important to him to kill as many German nationals of the Christian faith as possible. He wanted his actions to be viewed in the context of an Islamist attack, and understood as a contribution to jihad worldwide,” they added, according to media reports.

However, no evidence could be found connecting him to any extremist group, so he was not tried as a member of a terrorist organization.

Alhaw had been rejected for asylum in Norway, Sweden and Spain, before arriving in Germany in 2015 and being rejected again. He was actually in line to be deported before the attack, but the process had been delayed by a lack of identity documents.