A year after the knife attack in Bielefeld, the defendant Mahmoud M. was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was convicted of four attempted murders, dangerous bodily harm, and membership in a foreign terrorist organization.
The Düsseldorf Regional Court established the aggravated nature of his guilt in its ruling on Monday and also ordered protective detention.
In the state security proceedings, the federal public prosecutor charged the 36-year-old Syrian man with joining the “Islamic State” (IS) in Syria no later than 2015. According to the indictment, he was deployed as a fighter in Syria until November 2016, performing duties such as guard and border post roles, as well as working in the IS’s real estate administration. Furthermore, the indictment claimed that he remained connected to the IS after entering the Federal Republic of Germany in the summer of 2023.
In May 2025, he decided to kill as many randomly selected people as possible in Germany in the name of a worldwide “holy war”. To achieve this, he deliberately stabbed guests with knives outside a local in Bielefeld early on the morning of May 18, 2025, seriously injuring four individuals.
