GERMANY: German police are on the hunt for those responsible behind the stabbing of a 42-year-old rabbi in Frankfurt

The Central Council of Jews in Germany on Monday (September 10) condemned the stabbing of a rabbi in Frankfurt at the weekend. "For all we know, this was a lone attacker. We are trying to leave it within this dimension. We do not want to judge a whole group by the crime of one person. But is unique in the respect that nothing like this has happened in Frankfurt before. The trust of the community has been shaken but things will calm down in a couple of days," said council vice president Salomon Korn. He also urged the Muslim community to issue a statement to distance themselves from the attack. "I do wish some Muslim organisations would think about commenting on this just so they won't be suspected of engaging in sympathies for the attack. We don't know for sure the man is a Muslim, but obviously he was speaking Arabic, that seems to be a fact. Accordingly, a statement (by a Muslim organisation) might be a good idea, just to be above suspicion," Korn said. Prosecutor Doris Moeller-Scheu said the police are working on the assumption that the crime was an anti-Semitic action. "We act on the assumption that it was an anti-Semitic motive, that the attacker recognized the victim as Jewish judging from his clothes," said Moeller-Scheu. The 42-year-old rabbi was stabbed but not critically injured in an attack near Germany's financial district in Frankfurt on Friday (September 7). The police said the rabbi, who managed to get to a nearby hospital after the attack in the Westend quarter, was walking on a street in the upscale section of Frankfurt when he was approached by a man he believed was speaking Arabic. When the rabbi who was wearing a traditional Jewish headgear stopped to ask the man what he wanted, the assailant pulled out a pocket knife, uttered a death threat in German and stabbed him in the abdomen. The assailant and two women with him then fled. The police said the rabbi, who is a member of the local Jewish community, was operated on in hospital shortly after the 8:30 p.m. attack but the injuries were not critical.

ITN Source | September 11, 2007

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