The suspected gunman who killed nine people in the German town of Hanau has been named by local media as Tobias Rathjen, a far-right extremist who had an apparent hatred of minorities.
It is thought that Rathjen killed five Turkish nationals and others in a Kurdish area of the town before turning his weapon on his mother and then himself.
Born in 1977, Rathjen trained as a bank clerk in Frankfurt. He took a degree in business management at the University of Bayreuth, which he completed in the spring of 2007.
There is currently no indication that Rathjen was acting as part of a wider organised network. The interior ministry of Hesse state said that the gunman had not been on the radar of police or intelligence agencies for holding right-wing extremist views.
On his personal website, taken offline in the hours after the attack, Rathjen had uploaded a 24-page text in which he tells his life story, claiming that his thoughts and actions have been controlled by mind-readers working for an unnamed “intelligence agency.”
There are lengthy passages in which Rathjen railed against ethnic minorities in Germany and announced that people of certain African, Asian and Middle Eastern origins have to be “completely annihilated” within the country.
“As of today, however, very few nations or races have emerged positively, while other races and cultures have not only made no contriobution here, but are destructive – especially Islam,” he wrote.
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“Hence my conclusion to eliminate the countries with their populations so that mankind has a chance at all to solve the riddle, because this will certainly not be possible in the presence of a numerically superior majority of idiots.”
A few days before the attack Rathjen uploaded an English-language video to Youtube in which he tried to warn Americans that they were controlled by devil-worshipping “secret societies.”
Meanwhile, Turkish state news agency Anadolu reported that five Turkish nationals were among those killed in the shootings. German newspaper Bild reported that one of the victims was a 35-year-old mother of two. She was reportedly pregnant when she was killed, according to Bild.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said: “I believe the German authorities will endeavour to shine a light on all aspects of the attack.”
The four biggest Islamic associations in Germany called for more to be done in the fight against right-wing extremism. The Coordination Council of Muslims (KRM) said they had requested for months that there needed to be “a clear stand against Islamophobia.”
The Confederation of the Kurdistan Community in Germany said: “We are angry, because the politically responsible in this country have not taken a decisive stand against right-wing networks and right-wing terrorism.”
The group said the murder of politician Walter Lübcke, the terror attack in Halle, and the existence of the National Socialist Underground were all examples of state politics that have a “blind spot” for right-wing terrorism.
A demonstration against right-wing hate and extremism will be held in Berlin on Thursday evening.
