A 21-year-old Afghan asylum seeker who stabbed three in Ravensburg town center has been taken to a psychiatric facility, with officials saying he may not be found culpable for his actions due to mental illness.
The asylum seeker, originally thought to have been 19, was detained on Friday after the knife attack but under a “housing warrant” rather than an arrest warrant, and was taken to a psychiatric facility, Die Welt reports.
Assessors told police the Afghan suffers from what the German daily reported as a “profound psychiatric illness” and has been an in-patient at mental health facilities several times.
The assessors also estimate that his diminished responsibility will mean that his liability for guilt for the stabbing attack is either reduced or could be completely ruled out.
According to the public prosecutor’s office, the defendant, who has been in Germany since 2016, had invited a work colleague to Marienplatz to confront him over alleged teasing, taking a large kitchen knife with him in the morning to the town center.
When his colleague did not come, the man “suddenly and as part of a psychotic experience” stabbed two Syrian asylum seekers, according to attorney Karl-Josef Diehl.
