Authorities charge Afghan suspect in Munich car ramming attack that killed 2 and injured 44

BERLIN (AP) — Authorities in Germany announced murder charges Tuesday against an Afghan man accused of killing two people and injuring 44 in a car-ramming in Munich in February that prosecutors say was motivated by a desire to avenge suffering of Muslims.

The man, an Afghan national identified only as Farhad N. in line with German privacy rules, was arrested immediately after the attack during a labor union demonstration. He came to Germany as an asylum seeker and was 24 years old at the time of the attack.

Federal prosecutors said in a statement that on the morning of Feb. 13, the suspect "deliberately drove his car” into the union event in downtown Munich.

The car ramming fatally injured two people, a two-year-old girl and her 37-year-old mother. Forty-four other people suffered life-threatening or serious injuries, prosecutors said.

“The accused committed the act out of excessive religious motivation,” they said in the statement. “He believed he was obliged to attack and kill randomly selected people in Germany in response to the suffering of Muslims in Islamic countries.”

It was the fifth in a series of attacks involving immigrants over a period of nine months that pushed migration to the forefront of the past year's campaign for Germany’s election on Feb. 23.