‘I’ll kill you all’: Munich gunman’s one-year plan

THE teenager behind a “night of horror” that left nine people dead had been planning his shooting massacre for a year.

The Munich shooter, Ali David Sonboly.

A 16-YEAR-OLD Afghan youth has been arrested by German police on suspicion of a connection to the killing of nine people by an 18-year-old gunman in Munich.

The youth was under investigation for possibly having failed to report the plans of the gunman, who later shot himself, and may have played a role in a Facebook posting that invited people to the scene of the shooting, a police statement said overnight.

“There is a suspicion that the 16-year-old is a possible tacit accomplice to (Friday’s) attack,” it said.

Police earlier said the gunman was a deranged Iranian-German who was fixated with mass killings but not inspired by Islamist militancy.

The shooter, identified only as David S., visited the site of a previous school shooting in the German town of Winnenden and took photographs, Bavarian investigator Robert Heimberger said.

He said the shooter, who likely got his illegal weapon through the internet’s “dark net” market, was an avid player of first-person shooter video games, including Counter-Strike: Source.

He also received inpatient psychiatric treatment in 2015 for two months, spokesman for the Munich prosecutor’s office Thomas Steinkraus-Koch told reporters.

“The suspect had fears of contact with others” and depression, the spokesman said.

Mr Steinkraus-Koch added there was no evidence of any political motivation to the crime, nor that the shooter killed specific victims.

Information from witnesses indicated that his hatred of foreigners might have played a role in the mass shooting, even though he himself was the German-born son of Iranian asylum seekers.

Most of the dead were youths and all were Munich residents of varied ethnic backgrounds.

Police secure the area of a subway station Karlsplatz (Stachus) near a shopping mall following the shooting in Munich.

‘I WILL KILL YOU ALL’

Hueseyin Bayri, who witnessed one boy’s death, told the Associated Press the shooter screamed a profanity about foreigners and said, “I will kill you all,” as he pulled the trigger.

A video shot of the perpetrator also showed him yelling anti-foreigner slurs.

The gunman, a high-school student from Munich with Iranian and German citizenship, also wounded more than two dozen others on Friday night before turning his illegal Glock 17 pistol on himself.

Police told reporters a search of the red backpack lying next to his black-clad corpse revealed that the shooter was carrying more than 300 rounds for the 9mm handgun he used to kill his victims.

The filed-off serial numbers of the Glock made it difficult to establish its origin. But investigators said the gunman had no permit to carry it.

One victim was 45, another 20 and the rest were between 14 and 19, Munich police chief Hubertus Andrae said.

The fact that most of the dead were so young added to what Chancellor Angela Merkel called “an evening and night of horror”.

Riot police try to calm down teenage mourners near the crime scene at OEZ shopping centre, the day after the shooting spree.

GUNMAN’S ONE-YEAR PLAN

The teenager behind the deadly shooting rampage was a withdrawn loner, investigators said, adding that he had planned the attack for a year.

Law enforcement officials said on Sunday the shooter was a victim of bullying who suffered from panic attacks set off by contact with other people.

He was seeing a doctor up to last month for treatment of depression and psychiatric problems that began in 2015 with inpatient hospital care and then was followed up with outpatient visits.

Medication for his problems had been found in his room but toxicological and autopsy results weren’t yet available, so it’s not yet clear whether he was taking the medicine when he went on his shooting spree on Friday.

The attack came on the fifth anniversary of the killing of 77 people by Norwegian right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik, whose victims included dozens of young people.

Investigators said the Munich shooter had researched that slaughter online.

“He had been planning this crime since last summer,” said Mr Heimberger, citing a “manifesto” linked to the shooting found in the gunman’s locked room in the apartment he shared with his parents and brother.

Mr Heimberger said he could not reveal details of the document yet because there were “many more terabytes” of information to evaluate, but described the gunman as a “devoted player” of group internet “killer games” pitting virtual shooters against each other.

The shooter’s father saw a video of the start of his son’s rampage on social media and went to police as it was taking place, Mr Heimberger said, adding that the family was still emotionally not up to questioning by police.

Mourners hold flowers and a picture of Diamant Zabergja, one of the victims that was shot dead.

‘DIFFICULT HOURS FOR MUNICH’

Mr Heimberger said the McDonald’s restaurant were most of the victims died was a hangout for youths of immigrant backgrounds, and the dead included victims of Hungarian, Turkish, Greek, and Kosovo Albanian backgrounds and a stateless person.

In the aftermath of the attack, Bavaria’s top security official urged the government to allow the country’s military to be deployed in support of police during attacks.

Because of the excesses of the Nazi-era, Germany’s post-war constitution only allows the military, known as the Bundeswehr, to be deployed domestically in cases of national emergency.

Munich deployed 2300 police officers to lock down the city on Friday night, calling in elite SWAT teams from around the country and neighbouring Austria.

It was the second incident targeting victims apparently at random in less than a week in Bavaria.

On Monday, a 17-year-old Afghan asylum seeker wounded five people in an axe-and-knife rampage near Wuerzburg, for which Islamic State claimed responsibility.

Despite the shooter having no apparent Islamic extremist links, Muslims in Germany were already fearing a backlash.

“I started to get texts from friends asking if I was safe,” said Iranian David Akhavan, who works in a Persian restaurant in Munich.

“Then, my thoughts were: Please, don’t be a Muslim. Please don’t be middle eastern. Please don’t be Afghan. I don’t accept any of this violence.”

Munich mayor Dieter Reiter declared a day of mourning for the victims.

“These are difficult hours for Munich,” he said, adding that residents had shown great solidarity toward each other. “Our city stands united.”