ZURICH • A Swiss woman who knifed a victim in the neck and grabbed another by the throat in a Lugano department store on Tuesday was a known militant who fell in love with an Islamist militant online and had tried in vain to meet him in Syria, police said yesterday.
Federal prosecutors have called the incident in the Italian-speaking southern canton of Ticino a suspected terrorist attack and taken charge of the investigation.
"Police investigations in 2017 revealed that the woman had formed a relationship via social media with a jihadist fighter from Syria," the Federal Office of Police (Fedpol) tweeted.
The Turkish authorities turned her away at the border to Syria when she tried to travel there to meet the man, and returned her to Switzerland at the time, it added.
"The woman was suffering from mental health problems at this time. After returning to Switzerland, she was admitted to a psychiatric clinic," Fedpol added, saying she had not come to its attention in any terror-related investigation since 2017.
The 28-year-old woman, who lives in the area, was in custody after passers-by subdued her until the police arrived.
One victim had serious but non-life-threatening injuries, and another had light injuries.
Neutral Switzerland has so far been spared the kind of large-scale militant attacks that prompted France and Germany this month to push for tighter European Union borders, after suspected Islamist militants killed eight people in Paris, Nice and Vienna within a month.
But Switzerland has identified hundreds of residents deemed a threat and militants who have travelled to war zones. Two men arrested in the town of Winterthur this month over possible links to a militant shooting attack in Vienna that killed four people on Nov 2 had visited the attacker in July.
In September, a man Swiss media dubbed the "Emir of Winterthur" and described as a leading Islamist militant in Switzerland was sentenced to 50 months in prison for ties to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Federal prosecutors said the fatal stabbing of a Portuguese man in September in the town of Morges, in western Switzerland, was still being investigated for a possible "terrorist motive".
A Swiss-Turkish national has been arrested.
REUTERS
