A Rotterdam court has ordered a man who stabbed another to death near the city’s Erasmus bridge last year should be held in a secure psychiatric clinic, ruling that he cannot be held criminally responsible for his actions.

The court imposed a hospital order with compulsory confinement after concluding that Ayoub M was not responsible for his actions at the time of the attack on September 19, 2024.

“The horrific acts cannot be attributed to him,” the court said in its verdict. “He was fully psychotic.” Prosecutors had sought a 20-year prison sentence and compulsory treatment for murder and attempted murder with terrorist intent.

M told the court at the start of the hearings in early December that he could not remember the attack and again denied being a terrorist. The court nevertheless ruled that he acted with a terrorist motive, while also concluding that his actions could not be legally attributed to him.

Psychiatrists and psychologists at the Pieter Baan Centre examined M for 10 weeks and concluded that he has never been entirely free of psychoses. They advised the court to hold him partially responsible for his actions, but the judges rejected that recommendation and ruled him fully unaccountable.

The attack took place by a cafe near the Erasmus Bridge, where M suddenly stabbed passers-by while repeatedly shouting “Allahu akbar”, according to witnesses. A 32-year-old German man was killed and a 33-year-old man from Switzerland seriously injured.

Investigators found jihadist material on his laptop and phone, including Islamic State videos about suicide attacks and life in the caliphate.

At the time of the stabbing, M was already under supervision after receiving a suspended hospital order two years earlier for a knife attack on his mother. In that case, too, he was found fully unaccountable for his actions.