BERLIN – A Berlin court has sentenced a Syrian refugee to 13 years behind bars for a knife attack at the city’s Holocaust memorial that left a tourist fighting for his life, court officials announced Thursday.
The 20-year-old defendant, who authorities say supported the Islamic State, attacked a 30-year-old visitor from Spain with a knife, slashing his neck at the memorial site located in central Berlin.
The victim suffered severe, life-threatening wounds that required immediate emergency medical intervention and placement in a medically-induced coma to save his life.
According to prosecutors, the Syrian national had spent weeks preparing to target and kill Jewish individuals, driven by his views on the ongoing Middle East conflict, which led him to select the memorial as his attack location.
The memorial site serves as a tribute to the 6 million Jewish victims murdered during Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime throughout World War Two.
