Germany: Somali Murderer Escapes After Being Taken to Cinema

An extremely dangerous Somali migrant, who had previously killed a man by stabbing and beheading him, was inexplicably let out of a psychiatric ward for an escorted visit to the cinema on Thursday, August 8th, during which he escaped, reports media outlet Nius.de.

The 22-year-old man, an asylum seeker from Somalia named Mursal Mohamed Seid, was sentenced to an indefinite stay at a psychiatric hospital in 2022, after he murdered a 52-year-old fellow resident at a homeless shelter, stabbing him 111 times with a knife, and then decapitating him.

The Deggendorf regional court ruled at the time that the suspect was mentally ill, suffering from schizophrenia, and that it was unclear whether he had been able to mentally grasp the seriousness of his actions. The court had heard that Seid believed there were two demons inside his roommate that he had to kill.

His carers at the psychiatric ward of the hospital in the southern German town of Deggendorf let him out for an accompanied visit to the cinema on Thursday. The man escaped when he went to the toilet, and, after a large-scale search of the area, was found and detained eight hours later, five kilometres away. According to media reports, he did not resist arrest.

Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann expressed his outrage, telling daily Bild: “I will order a detailed investigation into why the district hospital allowed this highly dangerous man to go to the cinema at all.”

Germany has witnessed a series of brutal knife attacks around the country, committed by migrants. The country is constantly grappling with mass immigration: 352,000 asylum applications were handed in last year, and 132,000 until June of this year.

Mursal Mohamed Seid’s case is reminiscent of another Somali migrant’s crimes committed in 2021. Abdirahman Jibril, a 24-year-old homeless man, who arrived in Germany as an asylum seeker in 2015, killed three people with a kitchen knife in a shopping centre in Würzburg, Bavaria, and wounded seven others. His defence attorney said the suspect had been suffering from a psychotic episode and “voices prompted him to commit this horrible crime.”