Knife attack on a German high speed train

Deadly violence in public spaced demands answers from German politicians.

On Saturday morning, a man armed with a knife attacked passengers on a train in Bavaria, injuring three of them. Other passengers fled down the train in terror with no way of escape.

Later that day a man stabbed a child in a Munich outlet store. As far as police can gather, this was an act of random violence. There appears to have been no link between the man and his 10-year-old victim.

As someone who works for English-language media outlets, I can tell you that a lot of the focus in newsrooms is one whether these are acts of terrorism. Did the attacker shout Allah hu Akbar? Have police found extremist literature in his home?

On both counts the answer seems to be ‘no’. The first suspect is a 27-year-old Syrian man who had refugee status in Germany. He has been put into a psychological ward and is not considered fully culpable due to suffering from psychosis. Little has yet been made public about the second man other than that he has been described as “stateless.”

The distinction between t…