Talking to DW, terrorism expert Hans-Jakob Schindler said the suspected attacker, Abdul B., was “very close, and potentially, even a member of the ‘Islamic State’ which means that we have the hardest, most extremist misinterpretation of Islam possible in the world.”
“All extremist milieus always have a call to action. Either by peaceful means, if we talk about what is called in Germany ‘legalistic Islamism’ i.e. change and destroy the political system and the free, democratic society by non-violent means — or in the case of terrorist Islamism, by violent means,” he said.
“Now, the queer, LGBTQ+ community is a symbol for these guys for a free, open and Western society, and therefore very very high on the list of symbolic targets to attack.”
Schindler, who serves as a senior director of the international Counter Extremism Project NGO, Â warned that the terrorists remained “relentless.”
“There are far more terror attacks that get prevented in Germany than the ones that actually happen. But the other side is relentless, every day they are trying to motivate individuals to attack,” Schindler told DW.
He pointed to social media platforms, claiming that the networks were failing to cooperate with security forces and “remove the harmful content which leads people to radicalize.”
