The Swiss president insisted that “antisemitism has no place in Switzerland,” after the brutal stabbing of an Orthodox Jewish man, allegedly by a teenager pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group.
“The knife attack in Zurich shocked me,” President Viola Amherd wrote on X, adding that her thoughts were with the victim and all Jewish citizens in the country.
Her comment came after the 50-year-old Orthodox Jewish man was stabbed in Switzerland’s largest city, with police initially saying he had been “critically injured.”
A police statement said the motives for the attack remained unclear but that investigators were looking into the possibility that it was an “antisemitic crime.”
The suspect had made a video claiming responsibility for the attack, Zurich cantonal police chief Mario Fehr confirmed, during a press conference.
In the video, the teenager voices his allegiance to the Islamic State jihadist group and called for fighting Jews around the world, police said, according to Keystone-ATS.
The youth prosecutor’s office meanwhile said investigators were looking into whether the attacker acted alone.
Police in Zurich announced they were hiking security around Jewish institutions as a “precautionary measure.”
