A German court on Tuesday sentenced Issa Al Hasan, a 27-year-old asylum seeker from Syria, to life in prison after finding him guilty of murdering three people and injuring 10 in a knife attack at a public festival in Solingen last year.
The state court in Dusseldorf convicted Al Hasan of three counts of murder, 10 counts of attempted murder and membership in the Islamic State group, and concluded that he bears "particularly serious" guilt, a legal finding that generally prevents the offender from becoming eligible for parole after 15 years. Judge Winfried van der Grinten said the defendant had been "massively" radicalised since 2019 and had spread ISIS propaganda on his TikTok profile.
Prosecutors said Al Hasan carried out the attack on Aug. 23, 2024, during a "Festival of Diversity" held as part of the 650th anniversary of the western German city. The indictment and court testimony said he targeted people he regarded as "nonbelievers" and as representatives of Western society, and acted to "take revenge" for military actions by Western states. The Islamic State group later claimed the attack through its Amaq news outlet, calling the assailant an ISIS "soldier" and describing the assault as revenge "for Muslims in Palestine and everywhere."
When the trial opened in late May, Al Hasan, sitting behind a protective glass screen under police guard, admitted responsibility in a statement read by his lawyers. He told the court, "I killed innocent people, not infidels," and acknowledged that he had "brought severe guilt upon myself." He said, "Three people died at my hands. I seriously injured others. Some of them survived only by luck. They could have died, too. I deserve and expect a life sentence."
Prosecutors presented evidence that Al Hasan had filmed videos pledging allegiance to ISIS and forwarded them to an ISIS contact shortly before the attack. They say an ISIS member encouraged him to go ahead with the plan and promised the group would claim the act for propaganda purposes. The court also heard that he had used social media to spread extremist content.
Authorities said Al Hasan had been slated for deportation to Bulgaria in 2023 but disappeared for a period and avoided expulsion. The case highlighted persistent challenges for German and EU authorities in returning rejected asylum seekers to the first EU country where they entered, a procedure governed by bloc rules.
The Solingen stabbing was one of a string of lethal attacks in the months before Germany's national election in February that involved suspects with migrant or asylum-seeker backgrounds, raising migration and border-control issues in political debate. Prosecutors and law enforcement officials drew links between some of those attacks and extremist sympathy or contacts.
The series of incidents included knife attacks and vehicle assaults in several German cities that prompted national discussion about deportation procedures, the monitoring of radicalisation online, and the capacity for security services to track and intervene with individuals suspected of extremism. Political responses to the violence were visible in the election campaign, during which parties called for tougher immigration measures and improved removal processes.
Al Hasan's conviction and the court's finding of particularly serious guilt mean he will serve a life term without the usual early parole possibility after 15 years. The Dusseldorf court's ruling concluded a trial that produced video and communication evidence the prosecution said tied him firmly to ISIS propaganda and to an intention to carry out an ideologically motivated attack aimed at civilians attending a cultural festival.
Victims' families and local officials have described the attack as a traumatic event for Solingen. Authorities continue to examine the steps by which Al Hasan remained in Germany after an earlier deportation order, and the case has prompted renewed calls from some political leaders for changes to deportation enforcement and cross-border cooperation within the EU.