3 hours ago
1
Germany’s opposition leader has pledged to strengthen border controls and step up deportations if he becomes chancellor after elections next month, a day after an Afghan man was arrested over a knife attack in which two people died.
Friedrich Merz, whose conservative CDU/CSU alliance is leading in polls, said he would not allow attacks like the one in the Bavarian city of Aschaffenburg on Wednesday to become a “normal affair”.
The suspect in the attack, who was arrested shortly afterwards, is a 28-year-old Afghan man with a history of psychiatric problems and violence. The man’s asylum process had been closed at his request after two years, according to Bavarian authorities. He had said he would leave Germany of his own will last month, but had not done so, and had continued receiving psychiatric treatment.
Merz said that “all illegal immigrants” should be turned back at the border, including people seeking protection from war or political persecution, and that he was ready to issue a “de facto ban” on entry for all those without valid entry documents.
He called for an increase in the number of migrant detention centres, citing the suitability of empty warehouses, converted shipping containers or disused barracks.
He added that people caught by police for criminal acts who had been asked to leave but had refused to do so “must be taken into custody … and deported as quickly as possible”.
Merz also sharply criticised EU asylum and migration laws, calling them “dysfunctional”, and called for a sharp departure from the bloc’s Schengen principle of free movement. He vowed to introduce permanent controls on all of Germany’s nine borders with neighbouring countries if he is elected on 23 February.
The Aschaffenburg attack was the latest in a series of violent attacks in Germany, fuelling calls for tougher security measures and boosting the standing of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which is in second place in the polls.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose SPD party is lagging in third in polling, convened a late-night meeting on Wednesday with his interior minister, Nancy Faeser, along with the heads of the country’s domestic intelligence service, the police and social welfare representatives.
He condemned an “unbelievable act of terror”, saying he was “sickened and weary of seeing such acts of violence occurring here every few weeks, committed by perpetrators who have come to us in order to find protection here”.
He insisted that authorities should work “round the clock” to find out why the attacker had not been deported as had been planned.
Faeser admitted that the EU’s Dublin system, whereby people who enter the EU in one country should have their cases processed in that country, was not working, at the same time as defending her ministry’s deportations record.
She also warned Merz of making political hay out of the attack, arguing it played into the hands of the far-right.
Local MP Andrea Lindholz of the CSU said the town was in a deep sense of shock. She said the lack of joined-up thinking between police, social services, intelligence agencies and other authorities was in part to blame for the attack.
“We must be able to ensure that our authorities are better networked,” she told broadcaster DLF, adding that the attack had underlined how “completely overburdened our system is due to the high number of historical illegal immigrants”.
Aschaffenburg’s mayor, Jürgen Herzing, drew parallels with other recent attacks, but warned: “We cannot and should not ever blame an entire national group for the attack of an individual … despite anger, grief and thoughts of revenge, let this not spiral into violence and hate.”
