Germany: Stabbings and Knife Crimes at Record High



  • Police reported more than 4,100 knife-related crimes in 2018, compared to around 3,800 reported during 2017 — and only 400 in 2008. Overall, during the past ten years, knife-related crimes in Germany have increased by more than 900% — from one a day to more than ten a day.

  • German media do not report most knife-related violence. Crimes that are reported are often dismissed as "isolated incidents" that are unrelated to mass immigration. Moreover, many crime reports, including those in police blotters, omit references to the nationalities of the perpetrators and victims — apparently to avoid inflaming anti-immigration sentiments.... Many Germans have the sense that danger lurks everywhere, but the lack of official statistics seemingly allows German authorities to pretend that the problem is imaginary.

  • Germany's knife-crime epidemic has continued nonstop into 2019. During the first 45 days of 2019, police reported more than 500 knife crimes — an average of 11 a day.



Mourtala Madou, a 33-year-old illegal immigrant from Niger, has been sentenced to life in prison for stabbing to death his 34-year-old German ex-girlfriend and decapitating their 21-month-old daughter at a subway station in Hamburg.

The grisly crime has drawn renewed attention to Germany's spiraling epidemic of stabbings and knife violence, which has raged since Chancellor Angela Merkel allowed into the country more than a million mostly male migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

The double murder in Hamburg occurred the morning of April 12, 2018, one day after a family judge denied Madou (also known as Mado Bido M. or Mourtala M.) joint custody of his daughter. Madou followed the mother, Sandra P., and their toddler, Mariam, into the Jungfernstieg station in downtown Hamburg. In front of many passers-by, he opened his backpack, pulled out a knife and stabbed his stroller-bound daughter in the abdomen. He then slashed her neck and severed her head. Madou subsequently plunged the knife into Sandra P.'s back and cut through her vital organs. She died less than an hour later at a nearby hospital.

During interrogation by police, Madou explained: "This is my child. This is my blood. The mother separates me from the child. Then I separate the child from her."

A review by Gatestone Institute of German police blotters found that 2018 was a record year for stabbings and knife crimes in Germany: Police reported more than 4,100 knife-related crimes in 2018, compared to around 3,800 reported during 2017 — and only 400 in 2008. Overall, during the past ten years, knife-related crimes in Germany have increased by more than 900% — from one a day to more than ten a day. The data shows a notable increase in knife crimes since 2015, when Chancellor Angela Merkel opened German borders to hundreds of thousands of migrants.

German media do not report most knife-related violence. Crimes that are reported are often dismissed as "isolated incidents" that are unrelated to mass immigration. Moreover, many crime reports, including those in police blotters, omit references to the nationalities of the perpetrators and victims — apparently to avoid inflaming anti-immigration sentiments.

Knives, axes and machetes have become weapons of choice for criminals in Germany, which has some of the strictest gun laws in Europe. People armed with knives, axes and machetes have brought devastation to all of Germany's 16 federal states. Knives have been used not only not only to carry out jihadist attacks, but also to commit homicides, robberies, home invasions, sexual assaults, honor killings and many other types of violent crime.


Knife-related crimes have occurred in amusement parks, bicycle trails, hotels, parking lots, parks, public squares, public transportation, restaurants, schools, supermarkets and train stations. Many Germans have the sense that danger lurks everywhere, but the lack of official statistics seemingly allows German authorities to pretend that the problem is imaginary.