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International
Islamic terrorist shot dead after Berlin
attack on policewoman – The
Telegraph
A known Islamic extremist has been shot dead by police
in Berlin after he stabbed and seriously wounded a
woman officer in an apparent terror attack. The assailant
has been identified as Rafik Y., a 41-year-old Iraqi
citizen who had already served a prison sentence
in Germany for his part in a 2004 terror plot. Police were
called to Berlin’s Spandau district on Thursday morning
after concerned members of the public reported a
“madman with a knife” in the area. Rafik Y. attacked a
woman police officer as she got out of her patrol car,
stabbing her in the neck just above the top of her
protective vest. The woman officer’s partner immediately
drew his gun and shot Rafik Y. four times. The woman
police officer, who has not been named, was rushed to
emergency surgery and was said to be out of danger on
Thursday evening. As well as the wound to her neck,
she was also hit in the kidney by a stray bullet. Four
more patrol cars quickly arrived on the scene and at
least one other police officer is believed to have opened
fire. Paramedics attempted to resuscitate Rafik Y. at the
scene but he died in an ambulance on his way to
hospital. He was one of three men found guilty of a plot
to assassinate the former Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi
during a visit to Berlin in 2004. The three were also
convicted of membership of Ansar al-Islam, a jihadist
group established in Iraqi Kurdistan with links to Al-
Qaeda. Rafik Y. was sentenced to eight years for his
part in the plot at the 2008 trial. He was released early in
2013 but electronically tagged and allowed to remain in
Germany. Bild newspaper claimed the electronic tag had
only been removed from his leg hours before the attack
on Thursday morning. For several hours after the
incident, police were treating it as a random act of
violence by a mentally disturbed man. It was only after
Rafik Y. was identified in the late afternoon that it
became clear that it was a terror attack. “The person
killed is an Iraqi citizen known to us who was convicted
in 2008 of membership in a foreign terrorist organisation
and sentenced to eight years imprisonment,” Dirk
Feuerberg, Berlin’s chief prosecutor, said in a statement.
Rafik Y. reportedly threatened police officers and a
judge at a hearing after his release in 2013. Until now,
Berlin has not seen major Islamic terror attacks such as
the 7/7 Tube bombings in London or the Charlie-Hebdo
shootings in Paris. The incident is likely to add to
tensions over the influx of tens of thousands of Syrian
refugees into Germany.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe
/germany/11872727/Islamic-terrorist-shot-deadafter-Berlin-attack-on-policewoman.html
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