Prosecutors are trying to commit a Somali man to mental care after he was accused of stabbing three people to death and injured numerous others in Germany on Friday.
Before the Wuerzburg district court in Germany’s southern Bavaria region, the suspect, an asylum seeker with a history of mental health issues, faces allegations of murder and attempted murder.
Last June, an attack occurred in Wuerzburg’s city center.
The man is accused of randomly attacking customers at a home goods store with a long kitchen knife before fleeing into the street. In the rampage, three women were killed and nine others were injured.
Prosecutors suspected an Islamist motive at first, however this assumption was not proven during the investigation.
Two court-ordered experts have said the suspect suffers from paranoid schizophrenia.
The trial will seek to determine whether he can be held criminally responsible for his actions.
Munich prosecutors are not asking for a prison sentence, but want the man to be committed to a closed psychiatric facility.
According to the prosecutors, the suspect has said that voices in his head told him to carry out the attack because he felt unfairly treated in Germany.
The Somali arrived in Germany in 2015.
Berlin took in more than a million asylum seekers in 2015-2016 at the height of Europe’s migrant crisis.
The influx was deeply divisive in Germany and fuelled the popularity of the far-right AfD party.