September 8, 2025: A 26-year-old German attacks two migrant minors in Uelzen. “You are not the first foreigners I have beaten,” he is said to have said to them, an anonymous source told the taz. He threatens them and shows them the hatchet and ax he carries with him. He is arrested; the police do not believe there was a “xenophobic” motive. The investigation was discontinued a short time later due to an opportunity decision.
“Opportunity decision” – that means: at the discretion of the police or the public prosecutor, a procedure would not be proportionate. It is stopped due to low culpability or lack of public interest, most often to relieve the burden on the authorities.
11 January 2026: The same man stabbed 30-year-old Ayoub F. in the back with a kitchen knife in downtown Uelzen. It hits the lungs and aorta, and passers-by call an ambulance. Ayoub F. dies a few hours later in hospital from his serious injuries.
The man is arrested again, and the police do not initially assume a xenophobic motive. It is said to the local newspaper az-online: “Although the victim is not actually a German citizen, there is currently no tangible evidence that the act was motivated by xenophobia or anti-religion.” Ayoub F. comes from Algeria. The local AfD speaks of a “nationwide knife trend” and is calling for the nationality and name of the perpetrator to be made public – until it turns out that he is German.
What’s actually going on in Uelzen?
The AfD is represented by two representatives in the city and district council in Uelzen. The situation is said to have gotten worse recently: Nazis clearly dressed have been appearing more and more frequently, according to an Antifa person who wishes to remain anonymous due to the increasing threats.
The person talks about 12-year-olds wearing combat boots, white shoelaces and a bomber jacket. By anti-fascists who are threatened on the street. About a nationwide networked martial artist who poses with a swastika flag and a machine gun and organizes Nazi marches. From right-wing extremists to dirty the places where left-wing rallies are registered with butyric acid in advance. And: from the police, who often see no need for action.
Olaf Meyer from the anti-fascist campaign Lüneburg/Uelzen has already experienced different times. “You’re a little more relaxed there,” he says. “There is no longer an organized Nazi structure in Uelzen. Of the right-wing skinheads from the baseball years, only right-wing rock groups are actually left. But every few years young Nazis pop up here.” A significant cadre of young nationalists is said to have recently arrived the region be drawn, we have to watch what this does to the right-wing scene. His many years of experience also make him suspicious of the police: “As soon as the police say: there is nothing there, we know: there is definitely something there.”
It is being said more and more often on social media: The man who stabbed Ayoub was a Nazi. A photo of the alleged perpetrator is going around, it shows him giving the Hitler salute. Several people who do anti-fascist research in the region told the taz: Although the perpetrator was not known to them before, they strongly assume that he was a right-wing extremist.
The public prosecutor’s office has now received “further information about the accused that suggests a xenophobic attitude on his part.” The investigation is still ongoing. The new information would also cast the crime in September “in a different light, but the relevant proceedings have already been completed and cannot be resumed for legal reasons,” said a spokesman for the public prosecutor’s office. The accused should also be examined by a specialist psychiatric specialist.