“There is a suspicion that the 16-year-old is a possible tacit accomplice to [Friday’s] attack”, police said in a statement Sunday, reported by broadcaster Deutsche Welle.
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The Afghan’s decision to delete his WhatsApp chat with the gunman and their meeting just before the Munich attack led investigators to suspect he knew of the planned shooting in advance.
Bavarian investigator Robert Heimberger said Sonboly visited the site of a previous school shooting in the German town of Winnenden and took photographs a year ago, then set about planning the attack.
The crime office told a news conference that the victims of the attack had not been specifically targeted and were not classmates of the gunman.
The gunman was also evidently inspired by Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik, and likely deliberately staged the shooting on the fifth anniversary of Breivik’s massacre of 77 people, Heimberger said.
According to neighbors the name of the teen was Ali Sonboly.
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.
Munich Police said the arrested youth may have played a role in taking over a girl’s Facebook page and inviting youngsters to McDonald’s – where the shooting happened – for free food.
In a separate development in the southern German city of Ansbach on Sunday, police said a man was killed when an explosive device he was believed to be carrying went off near an open-air music festival, injuring 10 people.
A search of his belongings revealed he was also an avid player of first-person shooter video games, including “Counter-Strike”, officials said Sunday.
Investigators say the two teenagers met past year as in-patients at a psychiatric ward.
On Monday, a 17-year-old Afghan asylum-seeker wounded five people in an axe-and-knife rampage near Wuerzburg, for which the Islamic State group has claimed responsibility.
The 18-year-old German-Iranian opened fire at a McDonald’s restaurant at Bavaria’s largest shopping centre on Friday. Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said three of the victims were also Turkish nationals.
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Mr Heimberger said German-Iranian Sonboly’s parents were still in shock and detectives had not yet had a chance to interview them.
