Knife Attack in Winterthur: Jihad, Psychosis and a Dangerous Grey Zone
The 31-year-old N. D. attacked multiple passengers with a knife at Winterthur station. NZZ reports on the interplay of radicalisation and mental illness.
Blood stains on the platform – and an open question of why
Just under three hours after the attack, evidence collection at Winterthur station was complete. Cantonal police officers took down the cordon tape, and SBB staff scrubbed a dark patch on the platform. "It is always difficult when the blood has already dried," said a member of the cleaning crew.
The blood came from one of three victims of the knife attack on Thursday morning. Shortly before half past eight – in the midst of rush-hour traffic on platform 3 – the 31-year-old Turkish-Swiss dual citizen N. D. apparently attacked randomly selected passengers. Eyewitnesses described a frightening scene to "NZZ am Sonntag": N. D. had circled the station in a strange mixture of hopping and running, shouting "Allahu akbar" several times, until he was finally arrested.
An old trauma returns
The shock in the city of 122,000 inhabitants runs deep – not only because of the act itself, but because it reopens an old wound. Around ten years ago, an Islamist group with dozens of followers had gripped Winterthur: teenagers who travelled to ISIS in Syria, terrorist propaganda in martial arts basements, hate speeches in the mosque. N. D. comes from the core of this scene. Now it seems as though a sleeper has awakened – and this in the middle of the campaign over the so-called 10 Million Switzerland Initiative.
The Federal Prosecutor's Office is now conducting proceedings for multiple attempted murder and is assuming a jihadist motive. However, the public debate has also centred from the outset on the mental state of the perpetrator. N. D. committed the act shortly after his release from the Integrated Psychiatry Winterthur (IPW). Previously, he had come to police attention through incoherent statements.
Psychiatry did not know the man
As NZZ reports, the IPW admitted N. D. as a patient for the very first time this week. The region's largest psychiatric facility treats more than 10,000 people annually – yet they had not previously known the only attacker in the city's history. This raises questions, as signs of abnormality had shown themselves in him for years.
His father told "Blick" that his son was mentally ill. N. D. reportedly said of himself that he was schizophrenic. Already eleven years ago, he described to "Tages-Anzeiger" incoherent religious awakening stories – for instance, how he climbed a tower in the middle of the forest, in rain, lightning and thunder, and read the Quran for hours.
The 'grey zone' phenomenon
Ultrarelígious, mentally ill – or both at the same time? Winterthur has thus moved to the centre of a debate that has preoccupied Germany for years. There, security authorities have repeatedly had to deal with perpetrators in whom ideological radicalisation, personal crises and mental illness can scarcely be separated.
Particularly well known is the Aschaffenburg case: In 2025, an asylum seeker attacked a group of kindergarten children in a state of acute psychosis and killed a small child and a man – even though he had been in psychiatric treatment several times. In the same year, a 39-year-old woman who had recently been discharged from psychiatric care injured fifteen people, some seriously, at Hamburg Central Station. And in the ramming attack in Mannheim city centre, the perpetrator was acting in a "state of psychological emergency" according to authorities.
BKA: "Particular challenges"
When asked about the Winterthur case, the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) explained that such attackers posed "particular challenges" for security authorities. BKA spokeswoman Sarah Steilen said: "With them, it is either difficult to predict beforehand or to understand afterwards whether ideology or mental illness was the triggering factor for the act." Both factors could influence each other.
Terrorism researcher Peter Neumann described the Winterthur case as typical of a "grey zone" phenomenon: "Increasingly, attacks can no longer be classically defined as terrorism because political ideas are mixed with personal frustrations and psychological vulnerabilities," Neumann wrote on social networks. This required "fundamentally new approaches in prosecution and prevention."
Interfaces between authorities fail
In this specific case, questions arise about procedures between psychiatry, police and justice. Psychiatric clinics do not have automatic access to police or judicial information. Criminal authorities only receive medical reports after proceedings are opened. It is therefore possible that the IPW knew nothing of N. D.'s extremist past.
Shortly before the attack, N. D. was taken to psychiatric care by police twice. At times, involuntary admission was ordered. Nevertheless, he was eventually discharged – and shortly afterwards picked up a knife at Winterthur station.
Source: NZZ