The fact that so many people were quick to suspect that the Islamic State was behind a shooting rampage at a Munich mall Friday that left nine people dead is a testament to the fear the terror group has spread across the globe, one local expert says.
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A statement on Munich police’s Facebook page says: “There is a suspicion that the 16-year-old is a possible tacit accomplice to the attack”.
The Bavarian State Crime Office said he had bought the illegal pistol used in the attack on the internet.
The shooter, David Ali Sonboly, killed nine people and injured 16 others at the Olympia mall in Munich.
Bavarian police chief Robert Heimberger told a press conference Sunday that Sonboly had visited the site and taken photos during a year of preparation.
German prosecutors said the shooter acquired the semi-automatic pistol he used in the killings on the dark web, which can only be accessed via special software.
The gunman had also been under psychiatric care in a hospital for two months in 2015, officials said Sunday.
Steinkraus-Koch said there is still no evidence of any political motivation to the crime, nor that the shooter killed specific victims.
They said Sonboly carried 300 rounds of ammunition in his backpack when when his body was found by police.
Heimberger said the McDonald’s restaurant were most of the victims died was a hangout for youths of immigrant backgrounds, and the dead included victims of Hungarian, Turkish, Greek, and Kosovo Albanian backgrounds, and a stateless person.
Sonboly was obsessed with Anders Behring Breivik, whose massacre of 77 people in Norway came exactly five years before his own shooting spree.
“Then we have to evaluate very carefully if and where further legal changes are needed”, he said in an interview published on Sunday.
“[He] said he would treat them to what they wanted as long as it wasn’t too expensive – that was the invitation”, Heimberger said, according to Reuters. Its serial numbers were filed off, and Sonboly had no permit to purchase weapons, authorities have said.
The spokesman for Munich prosecutors’ office says the teenage gunman who killed nine people in the city on Friday had received psychiatric treatment previous year.
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The incident has prompted calls by German politicians to tighten the country’s already strict gun laws. “Such a evening, such a night are hard to bear”, said the Chancellor after a meeting of the security cabinet in Berlin.
