Islamic terrorist shot dead after Berlin attack on policewoman

From The Telegraph:

A known Islamic extremist has been shot dead by police in Berlin after he stabbed and seriously wounded a woman officer in an apparent terror attack.

The assailant has been identified as Rafik Y., a 41-year-old Iraqi citizen who had already served a prison sentence in Germany for his part in a 2004 terror plot.

Police were called to Berlin’s Spandau district on Thursday morning after concerned members of the public reported a “madman with a knife” in the area.

Rafik Y. attacked a woman police officer as she got out of her patrol car, stabbing her in the neck just above the top of her protective vest.

The woman officer’s partner immediately drew his gun and shot Rafik Y. four times.

The woman police officer, who has not been named, was rushed to emergency surgery and was said to be out of danger on Thursday evening.

As well as the wound to her neck, she was also hit in the kidney by a stray bullet.

Four more patrol cars quickly arrived on the scene and at least one other police officer is believed to have opened fire.

Paramedics attempted to resucitate Rafik Y. at the scene but he died in an ambulance on his way to hospital.

He was one of three men found guilty of a plot to assassinate the former Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi during a visit to Berlin in 2004.

The three were also convicted of membership of Ansar al-Islam, a jihadist group established in Iraqi Kurdistan with links to Al-Qaeda.

Rafik Y. was sentenced to eight years for his part in the plot at the 2008 trial. He was released early in 2013 but electronically tagged and allowed to remain in Germany.

Bild newspaper claimed the electronic tag had only been removed from his leg hours before the attack on Thursday morning.

For several hours after the incident, police were treating it as a random act of violence by a mentally disturbed man.

It was only after Rafik Y. was identified in the late afternoon that it became clear that it was a terror attack

“The person killed is an Iraqi citizen known to us who was convicted in 2008 of membership in a foreign terrorist organisation and sentenced to eight years imprisonment,” Dirk Feuerberg, Berlin’s chief prosecutor, said in a statement.

Rafik Y. reportedly threatened police officers and a judge at a hearing after his release in 2013.

Until now, Berlin has not seen major Islamic terror attacks such as the 7/7 Tube bombings in London or the Charlie-Hebdo shootings in Paris.

The incident is likely to add to tensions over the influx of tens of thousands of Syrian refugees into Germany.