German Chancellor Olaf Scholz arrives at the town hall before visiting the site of a knife attack that killed three and injured several people during a festival in Solingen, Germany, August 26, 2024. | Photo Credit: Via Reuters
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Monday (August 26, 2024) that the government would tighten arms controls and speed up deportations following a suspected Islamist. Knife attack in the western city of Solingen.
The deadly stabbing at a street festival on Friday night has reignited the debate on immigration in the country and put additional pressure on Mr Scholz ahead of key regional elections on Sunday (September 1).
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“This was terrorism, terrorism against all of us,” Mr. Scholz said during a visit to Solingen, where he laid flowers at a memorial commemorating the victims.
A 26-year-old Syrian man suspected of having links to Islamic State group He was allegedly responsible for the attack, which killed three people and injured eight others.
Mr Scholz said he was “outraged by the Islamists who threaten our peaceful coexistence”.
“We now have to tighten the gun laws … especially with regard to the use of knives,” Mr Scholz said.
Mr Scholz said tighter arms controls would come “very soon”.
Mr. Scholz said Germany must also do “everything possible to ensure that those who cannot live in Germany and should not be here are sent back and deported.”
Ties to Islamic State
The suspect, named as Issa Al H., managed to elude police after the attack, and reportedly surrendered himself to police on Saturday evening.
The Syrian man was detained on suspicion of murder, attempted murder and belonging to a “terrorist group”.
The Islamic State group said on Saturday (August 24) that one of its members had carried out the attack in “revenge”.
The group then published a video through Jihadists. Amaq News Agency The video shows the Solingen attack, with the masked man saying he intended to avenge “massacres” in the Middle East and beyond.
This claim could not be confirmed immediately.
The suspected attacker has sparked concern in Germany as he has seemingly evaded attempts by authorities to arrest him.
according to Pictures and Spiegel According to news outlets, the suspect arrived in Germany in December 2022 and had protected immigration status, which is often granted to those fleeing war-torn Syria.
They were supposed to be sent to Bulgaria, where they first joined the EU, but they went missing.
According to authorities, the suspect was not known to German security services as a dangerous extremist.
Immigration debate
According to federal police data, around 52,976 people were to be deported or expelled from Germany last year.
However, successful deportations occurred in only 21,206 cases – less than half the total planned – often because the individuals concerned were not “handed over” to the police.
The attack has sparked a new debate about immigration in the EU’s most populous country ahead of regional elections in Saxony and Thuringia next week, where the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is likely to gain ground.
Ursula Muench, director of the Academy of Political Education, said the attack would reinforce the perception that the government had been “defeated”.
The AfD has accused successive governments of creating “chaos” by allowing too many immigrants to enter, and called for a ban on new admissions.
Meanwhile, Friedrich Merz, leader of Germany’s main opposition CDU party, urged the government to stop accepting refugees from Syria and Afghanistan.
The government – a coalition between Scholz’s Social Democrats, the Greens and the pro-business FDP – had already announced steps to tighten immigration rules.
Following an attack by a 25-year-old Afghan man at an anti-Islam rally in Mannheim in May, the government said it would consider resuming direct deportations to Afghanistan and Syria after years of hiatus.
German security services are on high alert for Islamist attacks. The Gaza War began on 7 October with Hamas attacks on Israel.
There have been a number of such attacks in Germany in recent years, the deadliest being a truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market in 2016 that killed 12 people.