The migrant who stabbed a police officer to death and injured five others at an anti-Islamification rally last week in Germany has been revealed to be a failed asylum seeker, sparking a national debate on migration ahead of the European Parliament elections.
“Sulaiman A.”, the suspected Islamist terrorist who launched a frenzied and fatal attack with a combat-style knife at a rally in Mannheim against the increased impacts of immigration from the Islamic world by activist Michael Stürzenberger, first came to the country from Afghanistan in 2013, German paper of record Welt reports.
The paper claimed to have been provided with official documents which said that his request for asylum status was rejected in July of 2014. However, authorities failed to deport him. Nine years later the government granted the would-be attacker a temporary residence permit under Section 28 of the Residence Act after he had a child with a woman with German citizenship.
Welt also reports that starting in 2020, Sulainman changed his appearance “significantly” and grew a full beard. Evidence also suggests that he had begun to post jihadist content online, including videos featuring the words of the late radical Islamist Afghan preacher and former Taliban commander Ahmad Zahir Aslamiyar, whose video clips and audio messages are reportedly widely shared by members of the Islamic State of Khorasan terrorist network.
During the attack, in which the failed asylum seeker stabbed Stürzenberger and four other participants at the rally, before stabbing a police officer in the neck — ultimately killing the officer — Sulainman was shot by another officer.
The attacker has since been incapacitated in hospital and therefore — despite being charged with murder — has not been interviewed by investigators so no official motive has been made available. However, authorities said this week that an Islamist motive is being assumed and that the Federal Prosecutor General is taking over the case, as is typical in cases of terrorism.
The attack by the Afghan migrant, video of which was widely circulated on social media, has sparked a national debate in Germany and looks to play an important role in shaping how the people vote in the European Parliament elections this weekend.
Immigration was already front of mind for many Germans even before Friday’s attack, with a recent survey conducted for German television programme Tagesschau finding that “refugee, asylum and integration policy” was among the top two problems cited by 41 per cent of the public.
The revelations of the government’s role in failing to prevent the attack and its role in radically transforming the country through open borders policies may be a boon for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which unlike other European populist parties has struggled as of late following a number of scandals, with a snap poll in the wake of the attack seeing the party falling to third place in national popularity polls at 15.5 after surging last year to over 20 per cent.
However, foreign policy expert at the University of Cologne, Thomas Jäger said that the attack will likely boost the AfD, telling the Bild newspaper: “The attack in Mannheim is helping the party because one of its most important issues is once again the focus of attention,” adding that migration is “an issue with which it has repeatedly been able to ignite the anger of its voters.”
Andreas Rödder of the University of Mainz also noted: “The more problems related to migration become visible, the more support there will be for the parties that promise to remedy the situation. I doubt that the centrist parties have understood what is brewing here.”
In a joint statement following the Mannheim attack, AfD leaders Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel said: “The violence against all citizens must be stopped. The Alternative for Germany wants secure borders and Fortress Europe. Immigration from Afghanistan must be stopped and repatriations must be initiated. In order to make this effort possible, the federal Government must finally enter into diplomatic exchanges with the Afghan government.”
Apparently in an effort to stave off a potential AfD surge, the governing Social Democrats (SPD) of Chancellor Olaf Scholz picked up on the suggestion to begin deportations to Afghanistan after previously refusing to send back foreign criminals to the country following the takeover of the country by the Taliban in the wake of U.S. President Joe Biden’s disastrous military withdrawal in 2021.
SPD Senator Andy Grote has proposed a plan that would allow the government to deport foreign criminals to their homelands, regardless of whether their home country is considered safe or not, meaning that migrants could be sent back to both Afghanistan and Syria. The proposal has reportedly received the backing of SPD Interior Minister Nancy Faeser as well as the SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag.
The measure has also been backed by Christian Democratic Union (CDU) General Secretary Carsten Linnemann, who said that the government must be able to deport criminals “even to Afghanistan”.
“Until now, we have seen such attacks mainly in France, where political Islam already dominates entire districts,” Linnemann said, but admitted that Germany now also has a “massive” Islamist problem. The centrist politician also admitted that aknowledged that his party “made mistakes” on immigration in a reference to the record of former CDU Chancellor Angela Merkel, who unilaterally opened the gates of Europe to mass migration from the Middle East and Africa, sparking the European Migrant Crisis in 2015. Linnemann said that he hopes that the public believes that the party has since changed and do not make “protest” votes by backing the AfD.
Yet, the political and media class has come under fire in the wake of the attack in Mannheim for the appearing to have been more outraged by videos of young Germans in Sylt singing a dance club song with the amended lyrics “Foreigners out, Germany for Germans” than the killing of a police officer by a failed asylum seeker.
Free Democratic Party of Germany (FDP) member of the Bundestag Wolfgang Kubicki said: “Mannheim is much worse than Sylt – but not everyone seems to realise that… This Islamist wanted to kill the police officer deliberately and out of hatred. Such crimes massively shake people’s trust in our legal system.”