Bavarian Bomber Pledged Allegiance to Islamic State: Minister

The Syrian who blew himself up in southern Germany, wounding 15 people, had pledged allegiance to Islamic State on a video found on his mobile phone, the Bavarian Interior Minister said on Monday.

On searching the bomber’s room, Nuremberg police found diesel, hydrochloric acid, alcohol, batteries, paint thinner and pebbles–the same materials used in the bomb–and computer images and film clips linked to the militant group, they said.

“A provisional translation by an interpreter shows that he expressly announces, in the name of Allah, and testifying his allegiance to (Islamic State leader) Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi . . . an act of revenge against the Germans because they’re getting in the way of Islam,” Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann told a news conference.

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The attack on Sunday, outside a music festival in Ansbach, a town of 40,000 people southwest of Nuremberg that has a U.S. Army base, was the fourth act of violence by men of Middle Eastern or Asian origin against German civilians in a week.

The 27-year-old arrived in Germany two years ago and claimed asylum, a federal interior ministry spokesman said. He had been in trouble with police repeatedly for drug-taking and other offences and had faced deportation to Bulgaria.

Fertinger added that police had arrested a suspect who knew the bomber. {snip}

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Germany’s federal and state security authorities have more than 400 leads on fighters or members of Islamist organizations among refugees in the country, the BKA federal police said.

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The suicide bomber had been denied entry to the Ansbach Open music festival shortly before detonating the bomb outside a restaurant, Herrmann said. {snip}

Ansbach prosecutor Michael Schrotberger said the attacker had suffered episodes of depression. Fertinger, the Nuremberg police chief, said he had made superficial suicide attempts by cutting his arms, resulting in him receiving psychiatric care.

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[Editor’s Note: According to AP, the bomber vowed in the video on his cell phone that Germans “won’t be able to sleep peacefully anymore.”]