GERMAN police have arrested a 16-year-old German-Afghan citizen as a “possible accomplice” to last week’s shooting spree in Munich which left nine people dead.
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The youth was under investigation for possibly having failed to report the plans of the gunman, a police statement said.
The investigators are still trying to determine the motivation behind the attacker’s behavior, but prosecutors and Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the teenager was treated for depression and that he might have been intimidated by other young people.
The gunman had also been under psychiatric care in a hospital for two months in 2015, officials said on Sunday. Medication was found at the teen’s home, but investigators don’t know yet whether he had been taking it, Steinkraus-Koch added.
“There, it also became apparent to the (Afghan) suspect that the attacker was interested in Breivik”, Steinkraus-Koch added, referring to Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in back-to-back attacks in Norway in 2011.
They said Sonboly carried 300 rounds of ammunition in his backpack when when his body was found by police.
But police also believe the teenager was influenced by a previous shooting in Winnenden in southwest Germany in 2009, when a 17-year-old shot 15 people in his former school before killing himself.
Investigators are said to have come to the conclusion that the 16-year-old who is from the district of Laim in Munich had advance knowledge of the shooting spree.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said Munich had suffered a “night of horror”.
Although himself the son of Iranian asylum seekers, Sonboly reportedly yelled “anti-immigrant slurs” and shouted “I will kill you all” during his attack.
Gabriel said German authorities were investigating how the German-Iranian dual national had gained access to a weapon despite signs that he had significant psychological issues. He identified those who died as being of Hungarian, Turkish, Greek, and Kosovo Albanian background and said one was stateless.
The shooter took his own life following the attack.
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“Then we have to evaluate very carefully if and where further legal changes are needed”, he said in an interview published on Sunday.
