Police believe a Jordanian asylum seeker who claimed to be Syrian hacked his former flatmate to death in the street with a samurai sword after fearing his victim had exposed him as a fake.
Issa Mohammed, who used to work for McDonald’s, has been arrested for the horrific killing of Wilhelm L., 36, in a residential part of the city of Stuttgart, the capital of south-western Germany’s Baden-Wuerttemberg state.
Mohammed had been living in Germany as a Syrian refugee for the last four years, claiming state benefits, but it has now emerged he was actually from the peaceful and relatively affluent neighbouring state of Jordan.
Police now believe he killed Wilhelm L. as he feared he had uncovered his secret and passed it on to the German authorities, although it is still unclear if the victim did so.
In eyewitness videos of the attack, Mohammed can reportedly be heard screaming: “What did you send to Berlin?”
When questioned by police, Mohammed asked for consular assistance from the Jordanian Embassy.
German newpaper De Bild said it had traced Mohammed’s brother, Ahmad, 21, in Jordan. He revealed Issa had left Jordan in November 2014 and travelled to Turkey where he had obtained a fake Syrian passport.
Ahmad said: “He then took a boat across the Mediterranean with asylum seekers and arrived in Greece, In February 2015 he wrote and told us he had arrived in Germany.
“He met a German Arabic woman and married her in an Islamic marriage ceremony. After six months it emerged she was already married. He left her when he found out she was pregnant with twins that were not his.”
According to German records, Mohammed registered with the authorities in the town of Eisenhuettenstadt in the state of Brandenburg on February 28th 2015, claiming he had been born on 12th March 1991 in the Syrian city of Daraa.
He moved to Stuttgart in 2018 where he moved into a shared apartment with Wilhelm L.
Ahmad added: “In May he called to say his flatmate was making his life hell and that he would make his hell.
“I saw the video and recognised my brother. i was very shocked, Something must really have went wrong for my brother to do such a brutal attack.”
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Story By: Kathryn Quinn, Sub-Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News
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