Knife attack in Lugano – suspected perpetrator has to defend herself against allegations of terrorism – News


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The federal prosecutor speaks of an Islamist motive, the defense pleads for serious psychological problems.

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A knife attack in Lugano made headlines across Europe in 2020. A 30-year-old woman injured two women with a knife in a shopping center in downtown Lugano and, according to witnesses, is said to have shouted “Allahu Akbar”. These are the allegations.

Shortly thereafter, the Federal Office of Police (Fedpol) spoke of an Islamist-motivated act and a suspected act of terrorism. Former Austrian Chancellor Kurz condemned this terrorist act on Twitter.

Woman described as cold as ice

Now the trial against the woman, who was known to the federal authorities long before her crime in Lugano, begins at the Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona. She wanted to travel to Syria in 2017 and she had fallen in love with a jihadist fighter via social media.

Legend:

Matteo Cocchi (commander of the Ticino canton police), Norman Gobbi (councillor of state) and Nicoletta della Valle (Fedpol director) gave information at a press conference at the end of November 2020 about the stabbing on Piazza Dante in Lugano.

Keystone/Pablo Gianinazzi

However, she was turned back at the border between Turkey and Syria. In Switzerland, she was then placed in a psychiatric institution. Fedpol announced this shortly after the stabbing in Lugano. There is no mention of this in the indictment of the federal prosecutor.

On the day in question she stole a bread knife in the shop and shortly afterwards attacked two women in order to behead them with reservations and according to plan. The woman has now been charged with attempted murder on several occasions.

The defendant is fully disabled

She is also accused of violating the federal law prohibiting the al-Qaeda group and engaging in illegal prostitution. That was her only job, her lawyer tells Radio SRF.

Assessment by Karoline Thürkauf


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At the time, the media went overboard with headlines like “Terror in Ticino”.

Karoline Thürkauf is SRF correspondent in Ticino. She says how the people of Ticino reacted to this stabbing: “It’s difficult to say, because there is no prototype of a Ticino.”

Thürkauf continues: “I can say that the people of Ticino, who are very authority-oriented, may have been shocked at first, because the authorities quickly, possibly too quickly, spoke of a terrorist-motivated act.”

According to Thürkauf, the atmosphere that the authorities spread at the time was more alarmist than reassuring. “By the way, I am not alone in this assessment. When it became known that the suspected terrorist had serious psychological problems, most of the shock went away.”

According to the SRF correspondent, many in Ticino are now talking more about a woman with problems than about a suspected terrorist.

The psychiatric report, which has been written since the crime and the contents of which are known to the Ticino media, comes to the conclusion that the alleged perpetrator’s sanity is limited.

So the big and difficult question in the Bellinzona courtroom will be: Was this woman mentally capable of carefully planning an act of terrorism with explicit connection to terrorist groups – or not?

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