It is a surprise that the attacker who killed nine people in a shooting spree in the southern German town of Munich was not a member of the Islamic State or was inspired or affected by the Islamist group’s propaganda. David Sonboly, an 18-year-old, whipped out his pistol and went on a shooting rampage that started outside a McDonald’s restaurant near a shopping mall on Friday. The youth of Iranian-German nationality then entered the mall and killed a few more people, before fleeing and turning the gun on himself. By this time, pandemonium had broken out and international media started flashing the assault as another attack in Germany days after an Afghan had injured five people with an axe on a train.
The gun rampage in Germany’s third largest city claimed the lives of nine people. It is one more incident that created fear and loathing in western Europe after a string of attacks. The profile of the mall killer is slowly being revealed. Authorities have discovered that David Sonboly was obsessed with mass shootings and perpetrated a massacre on the anniversary of a Norwegian mass shooting. On July 22, 2011, right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik committed a carnage shooting dead 77 people in Norway. He was against migrants and harboured views similar to neo-Nazis, greeting the court with a Nazi salute.
That the Munich mall killer did not belong to an IS sleeper cell or was not inspired by the jihadists would come as a relief for security agencies. The German government would have another jihadist link to solve had the attacker belonged to IS, and that would have raised tensions in the country and the continent that is reeling with a number of Islamist assaults.
What German authorities are basing their probe on is the mental illness suffered by Sonboly. He is said to have been a patient of depression, the name given to a broad range of mental health conditions. In March 2015, it was a Germanwings pilot Andreas Lubitz who rammed the passenger airliner he was flying into the French Alps, killing 150 people. It was later discovered by the airline that he was undergoing psychiatric treatment for depression.
Though depression can lead to violent behaviour in some cases, it is likely that patients like the mall killer and pilot Lubitz were encouraged by increasing instances of fatal aggression in the public sphere.
Though such people don’t resort to violence because of religious or sectarian reasons, acts of public bloodletting by radicalised individuals may encourage them to let out their pent up feelings through the barrel of the gun or in some other way.
It is a surprise that the attacker who killed nine people in a shooting spree in the southern German town of Munich was not a member of the Islamic State or was inspired or affected by the Islamist group’s propaganda. David Sonboly, an 18-year-old, whipped out his pistol and went on a shooting rampage that started outside a McDonald’s restaurant near a shopping mall on Friday. The youth of Iranian-German nationality then entered the mall and killed a few more people, before fleeing and turning the gun on himself. By this time, pandemonium had broken out and international media started flashing the assault as another attack in Germany days after an Afghan had injured five people with an axe on a train.
The gun rampage in Germany’s third largest city claimed the lives of nine people. It is one more incident that created fear and loathing in western Europe after a string of attacks. The profile of the mall killer is slowly being revealed. Authorities have discovered that David Sonboly was obsessed with mass shootings and perpetrated a massacre on the anniversary of a Norwegian mass shooting. On July 22, 2011, right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik committed a carnage shooting dead 77 people in Norway. He was against migrants and harboured views similar to neo-Nazis, greeting the court with a Nazi salute.
That the Munich mall killer did not belong to an IS sleeper cell or was not inspired by the jihadists would come as a relief for security agencies. The German government would have another jihadist link to solve had the attacker belonged to IS, and that would have raised tensions in the country and the continent that is reeling with a number of Islamist assaults.
What German authorities are basing their probe on is the mental illness suffered by Sonboly. He is said to have been a patient of depression, the name given to a broad range of mental health conditions. In March 2015, it was a Germanwings pilot Andreas Lubitz who rammed the passenger airliner he was flying into the French Alps, killing 150 people. It was later discovered by the airline that he was undergoing psychiatric treatment for depression.
Though depression can lead to violent behaviour in some cases, it is likely that patients like the mall killer and pilot Lubitz were encouraged by increasing instances of fatal aggression in the public sphere.
Though such people don’t resort to violence because of religious or sectarian reasons, acts of public bloodletting by radicalised individuals may encourage them to let out their pent up feelings through the barrel of the gun or in some other way.
