Deadly stabbing in German park sparks immigration debate ahead of election Reuters
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BERLIN (Reuters) – The arrest of an Afghan asylum seeker suspected of killing two people in a knife attack on children in a German park has sparked calls for a tougher stance on immigration and opened the campaign for Germany’s Feb. 23 national election.
The suspect, a 28-year-old Afghan national with a history of violence and undergoing psychiatric treatment, appeared before a judge Thursday afternoon. The judge will decide whether he will be detained before sentencing.
The suspect said he would leave Germany voluntarily in December after his asylum procedure was closed, but he did not leave and was not undergoing treatment, Bavaria’s interior minister said.
A two-year-old boy of Moroccan origin and a 41-year-old man died from their injuries after trying to intervene in the attack at a park in the Bavarian city of Aschaffenburg on Wednesday. Three others were injured.
“My wish list is to have a proper immigration policy, to get people who are obligated to leave the country to leave this country,” said Kathryn Berger, the organizer of the protest in Aschaffenburg on Wednesday evening.
The attacks have raised security and immigration concerns in Germany and boosted support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is second in opinion polls behind the mainstream conservatives.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz, of his Social Democrats (SPD), called an emergency meeting with his Interior Minister Nancy Fazer and security officials early Wednesday, calling the attack an “unbelievable act of terrorism.”
“I’m sick and tired of seeing these kinds of acts of violence happen here every few weeks, by vandals who come to us here for protection,” Scholz said in a statement.
“False tolerance is completely inappropriate. The authorities should try to find out why the attacker is in Germany in the first place. From the findings, the results should follow immediately – it is not enough to talk.”
‘Political Answers’
Friedrich Merz, the leader of the conservatives of the Christian Democratic Party: “This moves us, this hurts us, this requires a clear political answer.”
However, some Germans blame the CDU, especially Merz’s predecessor and longtime chancellor Angela Merkel, for encouraging the massive influx of asylum seekers and migrants from the Middle East and Afghanistan in 2015.
AfD leader Tino Krupala, whose party won the support of tech billionaire Elon Musk and was the only German party leader to attend US President Donald Trump’s inauguration last Monday, has called for a change in asylum policy.
“Dangerous asylum seekers must be deported. To this end, we want to maintain diplomatic relations with Afghanistan. Dangerous parks must be cleared of criminals and made accessible again to children and families,” Krupala said on X.
The liberal Free Democrats have also followed Austria’s lead in calling for closer ties with the Afghan Taliban to accommodate failed asylum seekers.
Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann, who said investigators in Wednesday’s attack were focusing on the suspect’s mental illness, said the first housing search at the asylum found no evidence of radical Islamic sympathies.