Islamic State Supporter from Turkey Stabs Three at Swiss Train Station

Swiss police have arrested a 31-year-old Islamist who stabbed three people with a knife while shouting “Allahu Akbar” at the Winterthur train station in the canton of Zurich at 08:30 local time on May 28, the second day of Eid al-Adha, an important Islamic holy day.

The jihadi has been identified as Nesip Dedeler, a naturalized Turk and Islamic State supporter, who had been charged with “spreading ISIS propaganda” in 2015, Zurich Police Commander Marius Weyermann confirmed.

Dedeler’s three victims, Swiss citizens aged 28, 43, and 52, have been hospitalized, with one of them in a serious condition. The assailant rushed toward a group of schoolchildren as a schoolteacher stood in front of them to protect them, local media reported.

“I saw him rush out of the ramp and try to stab a man,” taxi driver Turhan Muslu told Blick. “The passerby fought back with all his might.” The police responded within minutes and subdued the assailant. “It all happened incredibly fast. If those security forces hadn’t come out of the station so quickly, I don’t know what would have happened.”

Authorities Confirm Terrorism

“I am exceptionally calling this a terrorist attack,” Mario Fehr, security chief of Zurich, told reporters. It was “clear from the scene that the motive for this act must be sought in the realm of radicalization and extremism.” The “vile terrorist act” was “handled very well by the police, who were able to prevent something even worse from happening,” Fehr added.

Dedeler obtained Swiss citizenship in 2009 and applied to renew his Swiss passport in 2024, but never reported to the relevant offices. In August 2024, he left Switzerland and emigrated to Turkey, where “he disappeared for two years,” Fehr said. “He should be stripped of his citizenship.” Police had also investigated the radicalization of Dedeler’s two brothers.

On May 25, Dedeler turned himself in to the Winterthur police, where “he made incoherent statements” and was taken to the Center for Integrated Psychiatry in Winterthur. He escaped from the center on May 26. The following day, a doctor declared him no longer a danger. The next day, Dedeler went on the stabbing spree.

Dedeler’s Islamist activities surfaced in 2018 during police investigations into the “youth group” of the An’Nur mosque in Winterthur. The ISIS supporter repeatedly received “nasheeds” (songs containing radical content that are also used to spread jihadist propaganda), SRF revealed.

Winterthur’s History of Jihadism

The town of Winterthur and the An’Nur mosque have a history of association with jihadis, according to a 2020 report on jihadism in Switzerland published by the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT). A group of approximately 25 young men and a handful of older mentors formed the core of the extremist Salafist clique in the mosque.

In August 2020, the Supreme Court of Switzerland began the trial against high-profile jihadi suspect Sandro V. from Winterthur, a city with one of the highest Muslim populations in Switzerland.

The defendant, an Italian-Bosnian convert, was charged with violating the Federal Act on the Proscription of the Groups Al-Qaeda, Islamic State, and Associated Groups for traveling to Syria in 2013 and returning to establish a network of Salafi-Jihadi youths, of whom eight later joined ISIS.

“Up until its closure in 2017, the An’Nur mosque in Winterthur was considered to be the
largest hotspot of Jihadist radicalization in Switzerland. At least 12 individuals associated with this mosque traveled to Syria, which is the highest number from a single Swiss city,” the 53-page dossier reported.

The first officially recorded jihadi from Winterthur left to join the Islamic State in 2012. The 32-year-old German national with Kosovan roots, known as G.F., regularly frequented the An’Nur mosque and distributed Qurans in several Swiss cities.

In 2015, Christian (18), also known as Abu Malik, a Swiss-Italian convert, left Winterthur
to join ISIS in Syria. Swiss authorities believe Christian was killed in an airstrike a few months after his arrival.

In October 2016, an Ethiopian imam called on worshippers at the An’Nur mosque in Winterthur to burn and kill other Muslims who refused to take part in communal prayers. Police raided the mosque and arrested the imam and three Islamists.

Eight members of the Salafi youth group at the mosque identified the informant. Three weeks later, they caught a young North African taking pictures in the mosque and confronted him. Together with a friend, the victim was held against his will, interrogated, beaten, and threatened with being killed.

The Islamic Central Council of Switzerland (IZR) issued a statement condemning the attack. “Islam unequivocally forbids violence against innocent people. Anyone who claims to commit such a heinous act in the name of Islam is acting diametrically against Islam, and anyone who allows this or remains silent shares responsibility,” the statement noted.

“The so-called Islamic State (IS) is not an Islamic movement, but a perverse terrorist sect whose sole aim is to sow discord, murder innocent people, and damage the reputation of Muslims worldwide. This sect misuses sacred words of our religion to legitimize hatred and violence,” IZR, which has been identified as a Salafist body, added.

However, in September 2017, Swiss prosecutors charged three senior members of the IZR with making propaganda films for Al-Qaeda. A statement from the state prosecutor said that “the accused offered the leading Al-Qaeda member in question a prominent multilingual multimedia platform from which to advantageously portray and promote both himself and the ideology of Al-Qaeda.”

In a 2016 article titled “Switzerland and Jihadist Foreign Fighters,” Fabien Merz, a researcher at the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at ETH Zürich, wrote that the number of foreign fighters from Switzerland challenged the assumption that the country was immune to radicalization.

“Even though statistically speaking only a small fraction of returning jihadists represents a real danger, this does not change the fact that the relevant security services must monitor the movements of every individual jihadist foreign fighter in order to, amongst other things, anticipate as best as possible their return and their intentions,” Merz warned.