BERLIN, Sept 16, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - An Afghan man accused of a deadly jihadist stabbing last year faces his verdict Tuesday for one of a string of attacks that have inflamed debate on migration in Germany.

The 26-year-old defendant, only partially named as Sulaiman A., has been on trial since February over the knife rampage in the western city of Mannheim in which a policeman was killed and five other people were wounded.

He is accused of using a large hunting knife in the attack last May which targeted a rally by Pax Europa, a group that campaigns against radical Islam.

The perpetrator initially attacked a speaker and other demonstrators, then stabbed a police officer who rushed in to help.

The officer died two days later.

Prosecutors have demanded a life sentence for Sulaiman A., who faces one count of murder and five counts of attempted murder and dangerous bodily harm.

Many Germans were especially shocked as a video of the attack circulating online showed the 29-year-old police officer being repeatedly stabbed in the back of the head.

While the suspect is not being tried on terrorism charges, prosecutors charge that he sympathised with the Islamic State (IS) group.

According to German media reports, Sulaiman A. arrived in Germany in 2013 aged just 14, together with his brother but without their parents.

They were denied asylum but, as unaccompanied minors, granted stays of deportation and permanent residency, and initially placed in care facilities, reports have said.

- String of attacks -

The stabbing was one of several bloody attacks that have inflamed a heated debate about the influx of several million refugees and migrants to Germany over the past decade.

Fears about immigration and public safety have fuelled the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) which won its best-ever result of over 20 percent in February's general election.

The election winners, the conservative CDU/CSU alliance of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, have made a tougher migration policy one of their top priorities.

Merz's government has tightened border controls and announced plans to regularly deport criminals to countries of origin previously considered unsafe, including Taliban-run Afghanistan.

Last week, a Syrian man was sentenced to life in prison for another high-profile Islamist knife attack, which left three people dead in the western city of Solingen last year.

Last month, an Afghan man identified only as Farhad N. was charged over a car-ramming attack in February in Munich that killed a two-year-old girl and her mother, with prosecutors saying he also acted out of Islamist motivations.

The deadliest recent attack occurred in Magdeburg in eastern Germany in December, when a rented SUV driven at high speed into a crowded Christmas market killed six people and injured hundreds more.

A Saudi psychiatrist, Taleb Jawad al-Abdulmohsen, faces six charges of murder and 338 charges of attempted murder in the attack, which authorities believe was committed with a more complex and unusual motive.

In January, then interior minister Nancy Faeser described Abdulmohsen as "massively Islamophobic and close to right-wing extremist ideologies" and under the influence of "incoherent conspiracy theories".