Rafik Yousef

Rafik Mohamed Yousef (also Mohamad Raific Kairadin , born August 27, 1974 in Baghdad , † September 17, 2015 in Berlin ) was an Iraqi Islamist terrorist .

Life

Rafik Yousef was born as an Iraqi Kurd in Baghdad. During Saddam Hussein's rule , he was imprisoned in Iraq for over two years.

Yousef has lived in Germany since 1996, including in Mannheim and most recently in Berlin-Gropiusstadt , where he managed a small construction business. He was in possession of a German travel document. Acquaintances described him as a "crazy and harried" person; In a Berlin mosque he was threatened with being banned from the house for making radical statements.

Terrorist activity

Yousef was a member of the Kurdish-Islamist group Ansar al-Islam and carried out actions in Germany on their behalf, including to finance the organization. He had close ties to Mullah Krekar . Between April 2004 and his arrest in December 2004 he tried to recruit fighters for Ansar al-Islam in Germany.

On December 3, 2004, he was arrested by the German police for allegedly planning an attack on Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi during his visit to Germany. Attorney General Kay Nehm launched an investigation against Yousef and two co-conspirators. According to information from Italian investigators, telephone calls by one of the parties had been tapped since spring 2003 in order to obtain information about Ansar al-Islam's activities in Germany. In a telephone conversation on 2 December 2004. Yousef was encrypted details of the stop planning award and expressed to a present undercover agent of the secret service, who was in his apartment, the approval of a death squad lying now available. Yousef then inspected Allawi's planned route. Yousef had previously reported that attacks in Germany and France were not permitted because these countries had not participated in the Iraq war .

The UN's Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee included Yousef as a supporter of Ansar al-Islam in December 2005 on the list of people associated with al-Qaeda. As a result, his accounts were frozen by the EU Commission. The US authorities also included him in appropriate sanctions lists.

Trial and imprisonment

The process at the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court began on June 20, 2006 and lasted two years. The cost of the procedure is estimated at 1.2 million euros. The trial was one of the longest terror trials in Germany; The conduct of the proceedings turned out to be difficult, also because of Yousef's behavior in the process, which often insulted judges, lawyers and witnesses and later began to file countless requests for evidence and bias. After he continued to refuse to rise when the court entered, the process was changed so that Yousef was only shown into the room shortly before the start of the trial and the judge entered while his handcuffs were removed while standing. Yousef accused the court of conspiring against him with the Federal Criminal Police Office ; his lawyer requested a psychological evaluation of his client and described the process as the most difficult process he was ever involved in. For improper behavior, Yousef was imprisoned in 22 cases for a total of 114 days. On July 15, 2008, he was finally sentenced to an eight-year prison term for "membership in a foreign terrorist organization in unity with attempted involvement in a murder". The Federal Court of Justice upheld the judgment on September 22, 2009, although Yousef was not in possession of a suitable murder weapon at the time of the access.

In the detention center, he was seen as violent, among other things because he broke a rib of a judicial officer. In 2013, after serving his full sentence, he was released from prison and placed under conduct supervision. He also had to wear an electronic ankle cuff . Yousef was still seen as a threat , but his deportation to Iraq was not possible because there he was threatened with the death penalty.

Rampage and death

On the morning of September 17, 2015, Yousef loosened his ankle cuffs at 8:52 a.m., after which police officers drove to his Berlin apartment but never found him. At this point in time he was under investigation into four threats; he had threatened a local judge, an employee of a social agency and a police officer. At around 9 a.m., Yousef threatened several passers-by in Berlin-Spandau with a jackknife with a nine centimeter long blade. Four radio cars were sent out. He stabbed an arriving 44-year-old policewoman under the protective vest and seriously injured her. As a result, colleagues of the policewoman opened fire on Rafik Yousef and shot him. According to another report, in addition to being stabbed by a knife, the police officer was also hit by a bullet from her colleague's service weapon. Later, Yousef could also be assigned a knife attack on an uninvolved stroller that same morning. After reconstructing his path, only he was a possible perpetrator, according to the authorities.

Yousef died of gunshot wounds in hospital on the day of the incident.

Individual evidence

Unless otherwise noted: All web links of the individual references last accessed on October 22, 2015.

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Berlin: Jihadist shot by police . Telepolis, September 17, 2015.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Dinner for Jihad . Spiegel 36/2005, pp. 62-63.
3. ↑ ^{a b} QDi.205 RAFIK MOHAMAD YOUSEF . UN Security Council Committeepursuant to resolution 267 (1999) and 1989 (2011) concerning AL-QAIDA and associated individuals and entities, 26 August 2009.
4. ^ Rolf Clement / Paul Elmar Jöris : Islamic Terrorists from Germany . Series of publications. Volume 1159. Federal Agency for Civic Education , 2011, pp. 230-234 ( ISBN 978-3-8389-0159-6 ).
5. ↑ Regulation (EC) No. 2018/2005 (PDF) of December 9, 2005.
6. ↑ Code of Federal Regulations: LSA, list of CFR sections affected. United States. Office of the Federal Register , 2006, pp. 725, 945.
7. ↑ 3 Iraqis on Trial for Plot to Kill Allawi . Washington Post, June 20, 2006.
8. ↑ Detention for would-be killers . taz, July 15, 2008.
9. ↑ Islamists in the dock: "Remember, the last judgment awaits you later" . Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 17, 2010.
10. ^ Stuttgart Ansar al-Islam Trial Continues . US embassy cable - 07FRANKFURT445.
11. ↑ ^{a b} Lawyer about Islamist Rafik Mohamed Yousef: "He did not hang on to life" . Tagesschau.de, September 17, 2015.
12. ↑ In the criminal case against Ata A., Mazen S. and Rafik M., the defendants were sentenced to prison terms for membership in a foreign terrorist organization . Press release of the OLG Stuttgart from July 15, 2008.
13. ^ Constitutional Protection Report 2008. Security-endangering and extremist efforts of Islamists . State Office for the Protection of the Constitution (LfV), Hamburg 2009.
14. ^ 3 convicted in plot to kill former Iraqi prime minister . New York Times, July 15, 2008.
15. ↑ At least six dead in Iraq suicide blast  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . The Jordan Times, October 6, 2009.  
16. ↑ ^{a b} At 8:52 am, Rafik Y. released his ankle cuffs . Berliner Morgenpost, September 17, 2015.
17. ^ Islamic terrorist shot dead after Berlin attack on policewoman . Telegraph, September 17, 2015.
18. ↑ Shot attacker Rafik Y. was a well-known Islamist . Tagesspiegel, September 17, 2015.
19. ↑ Rafik Y. who was shot . Berliner Kurier, September 22, 2015.