German authorities did not attempt to deport the later Berlin highway attacker. According to EU Dublin regulations, Finland would have been responsible for dealing with the Iraqi’s asylum application. Germany would have had six months time to send him back there. However, according to information from the news agency dpa, the authorities did not apply for this.
In mid-August, the Iraqi asylum seeker Sarmad A. had hit two motorcyclists with his Opel car on the Berlin A100 urban highway, colliding with other cars. Six people were injured, three of them seriously. According to the Berlin General Prosecutor’s Office, he only came to a halt when he pressed a motorcycle against another car.Afterwards he got out and put an old ammunition box on the roof of the vehicle and threatened in Arabic that “everyone would die”. In addition, the immigrant is said to have shouted “Allahu akbar!” several times and to have had a kitchen knife and a prayer rug with him. The man, who is now in a psychiatric hospital, is under investigation for attempted murder.Sarmad A. had arrived in Finland in 2015 and applied for asylum there, the dpa wrote. This application was rejected in early 2016. In March of the same year he came to Germany, where he tried again to obtain asylum status. He was denied this in August 2017.However, he was not deported to Iraq or Finland, but was granted a residence permit. Berlin’s Senator of the Interior Andreas Geisel ( Social Democratic Party) justified this three weeks ago in the Berlin House of Representatives that Germany currently “does not deport to Iraq as a matter of principle, because it is a state at civil war”. Exceptions are “the most serious perpetrators of violence, murderers, rapists, persons who have committed the most serious bodily harm, terrorists; all these were findings that were previously unknown to this perpetrator”.According to the Attorney General’s Office, Sarmad A. had had contact with a dangerous Islamist in a Berlin asylum center between 2018 and 2019. Referring to the Iraqi’s Facebook page, the tabloid Bild reported that he had regularly been known to make Islamist remarks since 2019.
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