No evidence of 'Islamist motive' for deadly station stabbing: German police

Police in Germany said on Tuesday they had found no evidence that a knife attack at a station near Munich that left one person dead and three people wounded was "Islamist"-linked. 

Prosecutors had earlier said that they were investigating "an apparent Islamist motive" after a 27-year-old German man was arrested following the attack at a railway station in the small town of Grafing, east of the Bavarian capital. 

But a spokesperson for the Bavarian interior ministry told AFP: "So far we have no evidence for an Islamist motive, but the investigation continues. We have found the man had psychological and drug problems."

The attack happened at around 5.00am (3.00am GMT), with one of the victims,  a 50-year-old man, dying of his wounds in hospital, said Ken Heidenreich, a spokesperson for the prosecutor's office.

The others wounded were men aged 43, 55 and 58, Heidenreich said.

"Around 5 am this morning a 27-year-old German attacked four people with a knife," Heidenreich told AFP.

The "assailant made remarks at the scene of the crime that indicate a political motive -- apparently an Islamist motive.

"We are still determining what the exact remarks were."

Local media reported that witnesses had said the man had yelled "Allahu akbar!" (God is great) during the attack.

A police spokesman earlier said that "a political background cannot be ruled out", adding that the man arrested was "not very cooperative".

The railway station was closed after the man's arrest.

"There is no longer any threat to the population," said another police spokeswoman, Michaela Gross.

The attack follows two similar incidents in Germany since last September.

In February a 15-year-old girl identified as Safia S. stabbed a policeman in the neck with a kitchen knife in what prosecutors later said was an IS-inspired attack.

She attacked the officer during a routine check at Hanover train station in the country's north before being overpowered by another police officer.

Federal prosecutors later said the teenager had "embraced the radical jihadist ideology of the foreign terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" and was in contact with an IS fighter in Syria.

Last September a 41-year-old Iraqi man identified as Rafik Y. stabbed and seriously wounded a policewoman in Berlin before another officer shot him dead.

The man had previously spent time in jail for membership of a banned Islamist group and had been convicted in 2008 of planning an attack in Berlin against former Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi.

Last August, two militants claiming to belong to the Islamic State group threatened Germany with attacks in an online execution video.

In the rare German-language video they urged their "brothers and sisters" in Germany and Austria to commit attacks against "unbelievers" at home.