Stricter knife laws and increased deportations of rejected asylum-seekers. Those are two much-repeated promises made again Monday by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz as he talked tough on a visit to the scene of the knife attack in which a suspected Islamic terrorist from Syria is accused of killing three people.
A “furious and angry” Scholz, speaking after he joined regional officials in laying a white flower at a makeshift memorial in the western city of Solingen, promised action in the wake of the deadly attack, in which eight people also were wounded by the failed asylum seeker.
The chancellor used the same threats and vows of “something must be done” earlier this year when a similar mass stabbing happened in the regional center of Mannheim carried out by an Afghan immigrant.
The Syrian asylum seeker suspected of killing three and injuring several others at a “festival of diversity” in Germany on Friday reportedly had a deportation order last year, but authorities failed to remove him from the country, as Breitbart News reported.
“We must do everything to ensure that such things never happen in our country, if possible,” Scholz said of the attack. He predicted a toughening knife laws in particular “and this should and will happen very quickly.”
Green Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck also called for a tightening of knife laws, saying there must be “more weapon ban zones and stricter weapon laws.”
“No one has to carry stabbing or cutting weapons in public spaces in Germany,” said the Green politician. “We no longer live in the Middle Ages.”
The leader of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, Friedrich Merz turned on Scholz, saying the problem isn’t the knives but the people allowed into the country:
“It’s enough,” Merz wrote, saying: “After the terrorist act in Solingen, it should now be finally clear: it is not the knives that are the problem, but the people who run around with it… In the majority of cases, these are refugees, in the majority of the deeds, there were Islamist motives behind them.”
He went on to demand the government begin deportations to Syria and Afghanistan, which have been halted over safety concerns, and to stop accepting asylum seekers from the countries.
The suspect now in custody turned himself in to police on Saturday evening, a day after the attack at a festival marking the city’s 650th anniversary.
Federal prosecutors said Sunday the attacker shared the radical terror ideology of the Islamic State group, which he joined at a point that remains unclear, and was acting on those beliefs when he stabbed his victims repeatedly from behind in the neck and upper body.
The 26-year-old had had his asylum application rejected and was supposed to be deported last year to Bulgaria, where he first entered the European Union, but that failed because he disappeared for a time, according to German media reports cited by AP.
Following a knife attack by an Afghan immigrant in Mannheim at the end of May that left one police officer dead and four more people injured, Scholz vowed Germany will start deporting criminals from Afghanistan and Syria again.
Germany does not currently carry out deportations to those countries.
