The German news outlet ZDF has discovered suspicious internet search queries from Russians in the run-up to the May 2024 knife attacks in Mannheim, Germany, suggesting Moscow may have had advance knowledge of the violence, London's Telegraph reports.
The attack, which was captured on video and went viral online, shocked the country.
The 25-year-old attacker, who killed a 29-year-old police officer who was trying to stop him and injured five others, came to Germany in 2014 as an asylum seeker. He was trying to kill Michael Sturzenberger, a Bavarian anti-Islam activist.
In the days before the attack, there were internet searches from IP addresses in Russia for phrases such as "terror attack in Mannheim" and "Michael Sturzenberger attack," according to ZDF's "Terra X History" documentary.
"With this evidence I would say we certainly have here at least an initial suspicion in intelligence terms — not in prosecutorial terms, but an initial suspicion in intelligence terms — that we need to follow up," Gerhard Conrad, formerly with Germany's foreign intelligence service, told The Times of London.
"We have to realize: This kind of crime would as a violent provocation absolutely fit with the toolbox of what we call hybrid war these days."