German appeals court upholds conviction of 17-year-old Islamic State sympathiser who wounded police officer

Berlin: A German appeals court upheld a ruling against a teenage girl who badly wounded a police officer with a kitchen knife, affirming that she did act on behalf of the Islamic State group. German-Moroccan Safia S, who in February 2016 stabbed a police officer in the neck at Hanover’s main railway station, had “agreed on the concrete act” with the jihadists, said the court, throwing out her appeal. The now 17-year-old had sought to overturn her conviction for attempted murder and the support of a terrorist group by a court in Celle in January 2017. She was sentenced to six years of juvenile detention for the attack which the Celle court said was committed “to support the Islamic State group”. In her appeal, her defence argued that she did not act on behalf of Islamic State, which never claimed responsibility for the attack. Authorities believe Safia S was radicalised as a young girl. They found a message on her phone after the deadly Paris jihadist attacks in November 2015, exulting about the carnage. “Yesterday was my favourite day”, she wrote. “Allah bless our lions who carried out an operation in Paris”. Germany has been hit by a number of jihadist attacks in recent years, the deadliest committed by a Tunisian man who killed 12 people when he drove a stolen truck through a Berlin Christmas market crowd in December 2016.