The Irish Times :German chancellor Angela Merkel is attending a memorial service in Munich on Sunday for the victims of the violent attacks in Germany in recent days, including the shootings last week in the Bavarian capital.Ahead of Sunday’s ceremony, the father of the Munich teenager who shot dead nine people said his son hid that he was bullied in school and was taking anti-depressant medication “I’m not doing well, we are getting murder threats,” Mr Masoud Sonboly, owner of a Munich taxi company, told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. “My wife has been crying for a week. Our life in Munich is finished.”Shortly before 6pm on July 22nd, Ali Sonboly, who lately went by the name David, opened fire in a fast food restaurant north of the city centre, continuing his shopping spree opposite in Munich’s Olympia Shopping Centre. After killing nine people, he hid for two hours in the car park and was eventually cornered by police in a dead-end street and shot himself.Early on the morning of July 23rd, police raided the gunman’s home in Munich’s Dachauerstrasse and discovered information showing an obsession with mass shootings.In recent days, police have questioned the gunman’s parents – but his father said today he was able to tell them very little about his son’s life of late.Mr Sonboly said he had no idea his son had visited a school in Winnenden where, in 2009, a 17 year-old student shot dead 15 people. A postmortem revealed traces of anti-depressants in Sonboly’s blood. “I want to know it all, including the medication my son had taken,” Masoud Sonboly told the German tabloid.He only found out that his son was being bullied in school four years ago by accident, when a classmate – not teachers – told him. “I took Ali out of the school and spoke to the teachers, I filed charges against some of the bullying students,” he said. The Sonboly family, originally from Iran, eventually moved to a better part of the city, where Munich-born Ali Sonboly began playing online shooting games, such as Counter Strike.Friends report that he legally changed his name to David and told them he was proud to share his birthday – April 20th – with Adolf Hitler.Around two years ago, police suspect, he purchased the murder weapon – a modified Glock pistol – online.”I knew nothing of the weapon,”his father told Bild.Today’s ceremony at Munich’s Church of our Lady will remember the victims of the recent attcks, and will also be attended by German president Joachim Gauck, Bavarian state premier Horst Seehofer and other political and religious leaders.
