German prosecutors charge teen over Islamist school knife attack

German federal prosecutors have charged a Kosovar teenager with three counts of attempted murder over a knife attack in the western city of Essen last year.

The suspect, who was 17 years old at the time, is accused of having stabbed his 45-year-old teacher at a vocational college, seriously injuring her, the Karlsruhe-based prosecutor's office said on Monday.

Prosecutors believe the teenager was driven by "an Islamist-jihadist ideology."

They say he took a decision in early September 2025 to "go on a jihad himself against supposed infidels."

On September 5, he armed himself with a knife and headed to a primary school in Essen, a former industrial hub north-east of Dusseldorf, where he attacked a janitor he knew personally, according to prosecutors.

"He punched the janitor and sprayed him with pepper spray," prosecutors said in the statement. Because the man fought back, the suspect was unable to use the knife.

He then proceeded to attack the teacher at the vocational college, stabbing the 45-year-old several times in the upper body, severely injuring the woman.

He fled the scene and then stabbed an unrelated man in the back on the street before being shot and severely wounded by police near the city’s main train station.

All three victims survived.

According to prosecutors, after those attacks the suspect had twice tried to find victims near Essen’s Old Synagogue "without, from his perspective, finding suitable persons to target."

The Old Synagogue is operated by Essen as the House of Jewish Culture and used for exhibitions and events. Religious services are not held there. The current building is a reconstruction, erected in the 1980s, of the synagogue destroyed by the Nazis during the Kristallnacht pogrom on November 9, 1938.

The suspect, who also faces charges of assault, grievous bodily harm, resisting a public official and coercion, is in pre-trial detention.

It is now up to the Dusseldorf Higher Regional Court to decide whether to allow the charges to proceed and when to schedule a trial.