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After rape-murder shocks Germany, suspect captured in Iraq

A failed Iraqi asylum seeker suspected of raping and murdering a teenage girl in Germany was arrested in Iraq overnight, German authorities said Friday, after his escape sparked outrage and raised questions over immigration and police failings.

Published: 8 June 2018 14:40 CEST

After rape-murder shocks Germany, suspect captured in Iraq

Photo: DPA

Ali Bashar, 20, who is believed to have strangled 14-year-old Susanna Maria Feldman after sexually assaulting her, was “arrested by Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq at the request of German federal police”, said German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer.

The arrest came after an outcry in Germany as police hunting the fugitive admitted that Bashar had fled with his family.

They managed to fly out of Düsseldorf airport even though the names on their identity documents did not match those on their airline tickets, said police, adding that their identity was only checked against the photos on the papers.

Bashar also turned out to have chalked up a long police record over less than three years in Germany and should have been expelled months ago.

“The government should beg for forgiveness from Susanna's parents,” said the top-selling daily Bild.

“The only thing that is worse than the murder of a child is the murder of a child by a criminal who should not have been in our country.

“Crimes like these are explosive for our society because they are the bitter proof that this country does not have sufficient control over who is residing within our borders.”

Newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung noted that “these cases seem to be adding up”.

“It is time to wonder how far the credibility of the government is being undermined when it is surrounded by so many absurdities,” added the daily.

Revealing that Feldman and her mother were members of the Jewish community, the Central Council of Jews in Germany urged a “swift and comprehensive” probe into the case as well as tough consequences for the perpetrator.

History of violence

The case puts renewed pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel's government over the decision to open Germany's borders at the height of Europe's refugee crisis in 2015, which led to the arrival of more than a million asylum seekers over two years.

Far-right party AfD, which had railed against asylum seekers, swiftly seized on the case to push its point.

“Susanna is a new victim of the egotistical and hypocritical welcoming policy of Chancellor Angela Merkel,” charged AfD chief Alice Weidel, who called for the German leader's resignation.

The party has called a protest Saturday under the banner “That's enough” while counter demonstrators are gearing up on the same day to rally against racism.

Bashar arrived in Germany in 2015 along with his parents and five siblings.

He should have been deported after his request for asylum was rejected in December 2016, but he obtained a temporary residence permit pending his appeal.

During this time, he got into trouble with the police on several occasions, including for alleged robbery, possession of an illegal switchblade and fights.

He was also among suspects of the sexual assault of an 11-year-old girl living in the same refugee shelter.

“The girl was raped by an Ali. There were four Alis living in the refugee home,” said Stefan Mueller, West Hesse police chief.

'Revenge reflex'

The latest crime is reminiscent of another case involving the rape and murder of a student by an asylum seeker claiming to be from Afghanistan.

Hussein Khavari was in March sentenced to life in jail for the deadly attack on medical student Maria Ladenburger, 19, in October 2016.

Tagesspiegel daily pointed to a third case, in which a teenage girl was stabbed to death by her boyfriend, an Afghan asylum seeker.

“What is particularly sad in these three cases is also that the victims were interested, curious and … tried to befriend (the newcomers).

“That's how integration usually works — there are hundreds and thousands of examples in Germany. But now also three dead girls,” it added in an editorial called “Poison for society.”

Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper acknowledged that such cases spark a “revenge reflex” prompting people to seek the radical expulsion of refugees and the abolition of their rights.

“Barbarizing the law is not the answer to barbaric acts,” it warned.

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With the German far right coming out on top in two state elections earlier this month, the socialist-led national Berlin government has reimposed border controls on Western frontiers that are supposed to see freedom of movement in the European Union’s Schengen zone.

The Netherlands government, which includes the party of Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, announced Wednesday that it had requested from Brussels an opt-out from EU rules on asylum, with Prime Minister Dick Schoof declaring that there was an asylum “crisis”.

Meanwhile, new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the left-wing Labour Party paid a visit to Rome for talks with Italian counterpart Georgia Meloni, whose party has neo-fascist roots, to discuss the strategies used by Italy in seeking to reduce migration.

Far-right parties performed strongly in June European elections, coming out on top in France, prompting President Emmanuel Macron to call snap elections which resulted in right-winger Michel Barnier, who has previously called for a moratorium on migration, being named prime minister.

We are witnessing the “continuation of a rightward shift in migration policies in the European Union,” said Jerome Vignon, migration advisor at the Jacques Delors Institute think-tank.

It reflected the rise of far-right parties in the European elections in June, and more recently in the two regional elections in Germany, he said, referring to a “quite clearly protectionist and conservative trend”.

Strong message

“Anti-immigration positions that were previously the preserve of the extreme right are now contaminating centre-right parties, even centre-left parties like the Social Democrats” in Germany, added Florian Trauner, a migration specialist at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Dutch-speaking university in Brussels.

While the Labour government in London has ditched its right-wing Conservative predecessor administration’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, there is clearly interest in a deal Italy has struck with Albania to detain and process migrants there.

Within the European Union, Cyprus has suspended the processing of asylum applications from Syrian applicants, while laws have appeared authorising pushbacks at the border in Finland and Lithuania.

Under the pretext of dealing with “emergency” or “crisis” situations, the list of exemptions and deviations from the common rules defined by the European Union continues to grow.

All this flies in the face of the new EU migration pact, agreed only in May and coming into force in 2026.

In the wake of deadly attacks in Mannheim and most recently Solingen blamed on radical Islamists, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government also expelled 28 Afghans back to their home country for the first time since the Taliban takeover of Kabul.

Such gestures from Germany are all the more symbolic given how the country since World War II has tried to turn itself into a model of integration, taking in a million refugees, mainly Syrians in 2015-2016 and then more than a million Ukrainian exiles since the Russian invasion.

Germany is sending a “strong message” to its own public as well as to its European partners, said Trauner.

The migratory pressure “remains significant” with more than 500,000 asylum applications registered in the European Union for the first six months of the year, he said.

‘Climate on impunity’

Germany, which received about a quarter of them alone, criticises the countries of southern Europe for allowing migrants to circulate without processing their asylum applications, but southern states denounce a lack of solidarity of the rest of Europe.

The moves by Germany were condemned by EU allies including Greece and Poland, but Scholz received the perhaps unwelcome accolade of praise from Hungarian right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Moscow’s closest friend in the European Union, when he declared “welcome to the club”.

The EU Commission’s failure to hold countries to account “only fosters a climate of impunity where unilateral migration policies and practices can proliferate,” said Adriana Tidona, Amnesty International’s Migration Researcher.

But behind the rhetoric, all European states are also aware of the crucial role played by migrants in keeping sectors going including transport and healthcare, as well as the importance of attracting skilled labour.

“Behind the symbolic speeches, European leaders, particularly German ones, remain pragmatic: border controls are targeted,” said Sophie Meiners, a migration researcher with the German Council on Foreign Relations.

Even Meloni’s government has allowed the entry into Italy of 452,000 foreign workers for the period 2023-2025.

“In parallel to this kind of new restrictive measures, they know they need to address skilled labour needs,” she said.