BERLIN – German law enforcement officials have taken a suspected accomplice in a 2025 terror-related stabbing attack at Berlin’s iconic Holocaust Memorial into custody, more than a year after the violent incident left a Spanish tourist seriously injured. Federal public prosecutors announced Wednesday that the suspect, a Syrian national identified only as Khalaf A. in compliance with Germany’s strict personal privacy regulations, faces formal charges of accessory to attempted murder and aggravated bodily harm.
According to the prosecution’s official statement, evidence indicates Khalaf A. spent the full afternoon of February 20, 2025 — the day ahead of the stabbing attack — with the perpetrator of the violence, Wassim Al M., also a Syrian citizen who was convicted of his role in the attack earlier this year. During that meeting, prosecutors confirm Khalaf A. actively encouraged Wassim Al M. to move forward with his planned attack.
Wassim Al M. was found guilty by the Berlin District Court in March on a multi-count indictment that included attempted murder and attempted membership in a proscribed foreign terrorist organization. He was sentenced to a 13-year prison term, the maximum penalty available under the convictions. Court documents from the trial confirm Wassim Al M. traveled from his residence in Leipzig to central Berlin specifically to carry out an attack on behalf of the Islamic State terror group.
Presiding judge Doris Husch explained during the sentencing proceedings that the perpetrator deliberately selected the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe as his target because “he believed he would find people of Jewish faith there.” After carrying out the throat stabbing of the Spanish tourist, witnesses confirm he shouted “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great,” as he claimed the attack for the terror organization.
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, one of Germany’s most prominent sites of national memory, sits just steps from the Brandenburg Gate in central Berlin. The sprawling memorial consists of 2,700 uneven gray concrete slabs, erected to honor the 6 million Jewish people murdered by the Nazi regime during the Holocaust.
The 2025 attack took place just 48 hours before a critical German federal parliamentary election, a contest where migration policy had emerged as the defining campaign issue. The debate over immigration had been intensified by a string of deadly attacks carried out by recent immigrant arrivals in the months leading up to the vote.