- The boy announced his plans to attack the ‘infidels’ in a video in a group chat
A 15-year-old boy has been sentenced to four years in prison for planning an Islamist attack at a Christmas market in the German city of Leverkusen.
The teenager wanted to rent a truck and “kill as many people as possible” by ramming it into the traditional market, a court in Cologne has revealed.
The boy had begun to “radicalise” in the autumn of 2023, the court said, and evidence against him included a video in a chat group announcing his plans to attack “infidels” with a recognisable Islamist symbol in the background.
He had planned the attack along with another teenager who was supposed to film it and share the video, the court heard.
The 15-year-old made an “exhaustive confession” during the trial, a court spokesman said.
The teenager wanted to rent a truck and “kill as many people as possible” by ramming a truck into the traditional market, a Cologne court said (file image shows the city center market)
The other boy, a 16-year-old from Brandenburg, the state surrounding Berlin, will be tried in a different court starting in July.
Islamic extremists have carried out several attacks in Germany in recent years, the deadliest being a truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market in December 2016, which killed 12 people.
More recently, the murder of a police officer in a knife attack in the city of Mannheim’s market square in late May is suspected of having an Islamist motive.
The number of people considered Islamist extremists in Germany fell slightly from 27,480 in 2022 to 27,200 last year, according to a report by the federal domestic intelligence agency.
Presenting the report, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said Germany would “continue to intensify the fight against Islamist terrorism.”
In another case involving teenagers, two boys and two girls aged between 15 and 16 were arrested at Easter this year on suspicion of planning an Islamist attack in the same region of western Germany.
Herbert Reul, interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia state, said the young age of the suspects left him “speechless”, adding that they represented a “huge challenge for society as a whole”.
Germany’s best-selling newspaper, Bild, reported that the four youths were allegedly planning to carry out Molotov cocktail and knife attacks on behalf of the Islamic State group.