On Wednesday, 27 May, doctors at the Winterthur Integrated Psychiatric Clinic (IWP) assessed Nesip D., a 31-year-old Swiss citizen of Turkish origin, with a background in the Islamist milieu. Official conclusion of the doctor on call: “neither dangerous to himself nor to third parties”. He was discharged that same day.
The next day, at 8:28, Nesip D. stabbed three men at Winterthur station. One of them was seriously injured. The police arrested him five minutes later. The director of security for the canton of Zurich, Mario Fehr, spoke bluntly: "I am deliberately talking about a terrorist act." The man shouted “Allahu Akbar” during the attack and ran past a group of school children.
The background data was not unknown: in 2015 he had already been denounced for violating the ban on the Islamic State, after spreading ISIS propaganda. In 2018, another complaint for a fight. On May 25, police picked him up for erratic behavior and took him to the psychiatric emergency room. He was released two days later. The clinic has announced an internal investigation into how that decision was made.
This raises uncomfortable questions about how the system works when radicalization and mental illness converge. In Switzerland, as in other countries, emergency psychiatry works with strict clinical criteria: prolonged detention without clear risk has legal limits. But when a person's record includes terrorist propaganda, recent disruptive behavior, and known Islamist backgrounds, the “doesn't look dangerous” assessment carries a very different weight. The IWP investigation will need to explain what was assessed and what was overlooked.