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Families Minister becomes first government official to visit site of Chemnitz stabbing

Family Minister Franziska Giffey laid down a bouquet of six white roses at a temporary memorial for a stabbing victim in Chemnitz on Friday morning.

Published: 31 August 2018 11:03 CEST
Families Minister becomes first government official to visit site of Chemnitz stabbing
Family minister Franziska Giffey lays down flowers at the memorial site in Chemnitz. Photo: DPA

The SDP politician is the first member of the federal government to visit the city in the eastern German state of Saxony after the death of a 35-year-old German and the right-wing protests which followed.

Afterward laying down the flowers, Giffey remained visibly moved at the place where the man was stabbed last Sunday.

“I opened the newspaper and I knew I had to come here,” said Giffey before a meeting with civil society representatives, added that she wanted to “hear what you need in your so important commitment to democracy and cohesion.”

The crime suspects are two asylum applicants from Iraq and Syria, who are now in custody. The two are suspected of stabbing 35-year-old carpenter Daniel H. to death after what police called an “altercation” in which three other men were wounded less seriously.

Following their Sunday and Monday evenings, street violence broke out, in which mobs launched random street attacks against people they took to be foreigners, including an Afghan, a Syrian and a Bulgarian man.

After being heavily outnumbered by thousands of protesters, some of whom gave Hitler salutes, police called in reinforcements from other states and federal police Thursday.

“We won't tolerate hooligans and violent far-right criminals taking over the streets,” said regional interior minister Roland Woller.

Tensions risked being inflamed further by a news report Thursday that the Iraqi suspect in the murder case, named as Ibrahim A. aged 22, had avoided deportation despite a lengthy criminal record.

Since arriving in 2015 he had reportedly received a suspended seven-month jail term for assault and been charged with other offences, including taking illegal drugs across national borders, fraud and property damage, Bild reported.

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CRIME

Germany arrests Syrian man accused of plotting to kill soldiers

German authorities said Friday they had arrested a 27-year-old Syrian man who allegedly planned an Islamist attack on army soldiers using two machetes in Bavaria.

Published: 13 September 2024 11:17 CEST
Germany arrests Syrian man accused of plotting to kill soldiers

The suspect, an “alleged follower of a radical Islamic ideology”, was arrested on Thursday on charges of planning “a serious act of violence endangering the state”.

The man had acquired two heavy knives “around 40 centimetres (more than one foot) in length” in recent days, prosecutors in Munich said.

He planned to “attack Bundeswehr soldiers” in the city of Hof in northern Bavaria during their lunch break, aiming “to kill as many of them as possible”, prosecutors said.

“The accused wanted to attract attention and create a feeling of insecurity among the population,” they said.

German security services have been on high alert over the threat of Islamist attacks, in particular since the Gaza war erupted on October 7th with the Hamas attacks on Israel.

Police shot dead a man in Munich this month after he opened fire on officers in what was being treated as a suspected “terrorist attack” on the Israeli consulate in Munich.

The shootout fell on the anniversary of the kidnap and killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games by Palestinian militants.

The 18-year-old suspect had previously been investigated by authorities in his home country Austria on suspicion of links to terrorism but the case had been dropped.

The incident capped a string of attacks in Germany, which have stirred a sense of insecurity in Germany and fed a bitter debate of immigration.

Three people were killed last month in a suspected Islamist stabbing at a festival in the western city of Solingen.

READ ALSO: ‘Ban asylum seekers’ – How Germany is reacting to Solingen attack

The suspect in the attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State group, was a Syrian man who had been slated for deportation from Germany.

A federal interior ministry spokesman said if an Islamist motive was confirmed in the latest foiled attack, it would be “further evidence of the high threat posed by Islamist terrorism in Germany, which was recently demonstrated by the serious crimes in Mannheim and the attack in Solingen, but also by acts that were fortunately prevented by the timely intervention of the security authorities”.

The Solingen stabbing followed a knife attack in the city of Mannheim in May, which left a policeman dead, and which had also been linked to Islamism by officials.

Germany has responded to the attacks by taking steps to tighten immigration controls and knife laws.

READ ALSO: Debt, migration and the far-right – the big challenges facing Germany this autumn

The government has announced new checks along all of its borders and promised to speed up deportations of migrants who have no right to stay in Germany.

The number of people considered Islamist extremists in Germany fell slightly from 27,480 in 2022 to 27,200 last year, according to a report from the federal domestic intelligence agency.

But Interior Minister Nancy Faeser warned in August that “the threat posed by Islamist terrorism remains high”.

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