BERLIN (AP) \u2014 A leading candidate to be mayor of Cologne was stabbed and seriously wounded Saturday by a man who claimed anti-foreigner motives, an attack that Germany\u2019s interior minister said underlined growing concerns over hatred and violence in the refugee crisis.<\/p>\n
Henriette Reker was stabbed in the neck at a campaign stand set up by Chancellor Angela Merkel\u2019s Christian Democrats at a market. Her condition was stable, police chief Wolfgang Albers said.<\/p>\n
Reker is an independent candidate in Sunday\u2019s election for the new mayor of Germany\u2019s fourth-biggest city, but is backed by Merkel\u2019s conservatives and two other parties. The 58-year-old currently heads Cologne\u2019s social affairs and integration department, and is responsible for refugee housing.<\/p>\n
Another woman was seriously wounded and three people had minor injuries from the attack, senior police investigator Norbert Wagner told reporters.<\/p>\n
The suspected assailant, a 44-year-old German national and Cologne resident who said he had been unemployed for several years, told officials that he targeted Reker and that \u201che wanted to and did commit this act because of anti-foreigner motives,\u201d Wagner said. He added that the man appeared to have acted alone and had no police record.<\/p>\n
Prosecutor Ulf Willuhn said officials will now investigate whether that was in fact the man\u2019s primary motive or whether his health played a role. They plan to carry out a psychiatric examination.<\/p>\n
Asked whether the suspect had specifically mentioned Reker\u2019s or Merkel\u2019s policies on refugees, Wagner said: \u201cNo. He made general statements in that direction \u2014 he didn\u2019t mention Ms. Merkel at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
City officials said Sunday\u2019s election would go ahead as planned.<\/p>\n
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere described the stabbing as \u201can attack on our democracy\u201d and said he had long been \u201cconcerned by the hate-filled language and violent actions that accompany the refugee debate in Germany.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis cowardly attack in Cologne is further evidence of the increasing radicalization of the refugee debate,\u201d he said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Germany has taken in more refugees and other migrants than any other European Union country, and the influx is stretching its capacity to house newcomers. Most Germans have been welcoming, but there have been repeated attacks this year on refugee shelters, ranging from arson to racist graffiti.<\/p>\n
Attacks on politicians are rare in Germany, but there have been prominent cases.<\/p>\n
Then-Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble was shot by a deranged man while campaigning in October 1990, an attack that left him using a wheelchair. A few months earlier, a mentally disturbed woman stabbed Oskar Lafontaine, then a prominent member of Germany\u2019s main opposition party, while he was campaigning in Cologne.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BERLIN (AP) \u2014 A leading candidate to be mayor of Cologne was stabbed and seriously wounded Saturday by a man who claimed anti-foreigner motives, an attack that Germany\u2019s interior minister said underlined growing concerns over hatred and violence in the refugee crisis. Henriette Reker was stabbed in the neck at a campaign stand set up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-9499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9499\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9499"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=9499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}