German authorities committed a series of failures prior to the terror attack in Solingen. They not only botched up the deportation of the Syrian man responsible for the brutal assault but also continued providing him with social benefits, despite him being a failed asylum seeker.
According to daily Bild, the knife attack committed by 26-year-old Issa al Hasan last Friday not only highlights the consequences of uncontrolled immigration but lifts the lid on the serious failures of Germany’s asylum and deportation system.
The tabloid called what happened the deportation scandal of the year.
Issa al Hasan attacked festivalgoers in the western German city of Solingen on August 23rd, killing three people, and injuring eight more. All of the victims were stabbed in the neck. The Islamic State terror group claimed responsibility for the attack.
The perpetrator came to Germany in December 2022. He was supposed to have been deported back to Bulgaria last year, as he had entered the European Union via Bulgaria, and should have been registered as an asylum seeker there. Employees of the immigration office went to collect the man at a refugee centre in Paderborn in June 2023 to put him on a flight back to Bulgaria, but they could not find him.
Although Issa al Hasan returned to the shelter later that day, the authorities did not go back to fetch him. Instead, they took the inexplicable and absurd decision to let him stay. Because he managed to stay in Germany for more than six months, the deportation order expired and he was granted ‘subsidiary protection’ and placed in refugee accommodation in Solingen.
This suggests that Issa al Hasan was aware of his rights and EU asylum law, which is why he vanished on the day of his scheduled deportation.
Nevertheless, instead of being punished, he continued to reap the rewards of the German asylum system and was entitled to €368 per month.
The authorities could have chosen to start a manhunt as soon as they realised that the Syrian had disappeared. If he had actually gone into hiding, the six-month deportation order would have been extended to 18 months, meaning Germany would have had more time to bring him to Bulgaria. Instead, the immigration office let the deadline pass. It is not yet clear how extensive a manhunt they had actually carried out.
The case is similar to that of an Afghan man who murdered a policeman in Mannheim at the end of May. He, too, was a failed asylum seeker who had been living in the country illegally for nine years.
These cases raise the suspicion that hundreds of other potential terrorists or criminals who should have been deported have been allowed to remain in Germany.
As of December last year, there were nearly 250,000 people in Germany slated for deportation, while only around 16,000 had been actually deported during the entire year, signalling how the country’s lax migration and deportation policies have completely failed.
The issue has put migration back at the centre of German political discourse, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz promising to tighten domestic regulations, and calling for an international “task force” of selected EU member states to reevaluate the entire bloc’s asylum and migration strategy.
The attack in Solingen was not an isolated incident, as Germany has been rocked by a wave of knife crimes in recent months.
The latest such incident happened on a street in the western German city of Moers on Tuesday, August 27th: a man assaulted and threatened several passers-by. When police confronted him, he tried to attack them with two knives. The officers then fired at the 26-year-old, who was fatally wounded. No other people were harmed.
A spokeswoman for the public prosecutor’s office said the man’s motive remains unclear.
The perpetrator has been identified as a “German man.” As authorities regularly try to hide the nationality of foreign criminals or foreign-born Germans, it has not yet been established whether this “German man” is a recent arrival. Nevertheless, his neighbour, who spoke to Bild, said the perpetrator had serious psychiatric problems, and required a carer to look after him.