German
chancellor pledges tougher weapons laws in wake of Solingen attack
Olaf Scholz
also promises swifter enforcement of deportation rules after three killed in
last week’s rampage
Deborah Cole
in Berlin
Mon 26 Aug
2024 14.57 CEST
The German
chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has promised tougher weapons laws and swifter
enforcement of deportation rules in response to the deadly mass stabbing in the
western city of Solingen, as the far right seized on public outrage in the
run-up to key state elections.
Scholz laid
a single white rose at the scene of Friday night’s rampage claimed by the
Islamic State group in which a Syrian asylum seeker is alleged to have killed
three and injured eight people attending a street festival marking the city’s
650th anniversary.
After
meeting with regional officials and listening to what he called the “very
moving accounts” of emergency services workers who tended to the victims,
Scholz told reporters he was “furious” about the murders but would not let them
tear apart German society.
“This was
terrorism – terrorism against us all, threatening all our lives, our
coexistence, our way of life,” Scholz, a Social Democrat, told reporters. “That
is also what the people who plan and carry out such attacks always intend and
it is something we will never accept.”
Scholz,
whose unpopular government has faced fierce criticism on migration policy and
crime from the conservative opposition Christian Democrats (CDU) and the
far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party before next month’s three
regional elections, said his centre-left-led coalition was prepared to “do
everything in our power to ensure such things never happen again”.
This would
include reforming weapons laws and studying how asylum seekers whose
applications have been rejected can be sent back more quickly either to their
country of origin if deemed safe or the European country where they first
applied for refuge, Scholz said.
The suspect
identified by federal prosecutors as Issa Al H, 26, whose last name has not
been released due to data protection rules, arrived in Germany in late 2022 and
applied for asylum, the news magazine Der Spiegel reported. Media reports said
he was at that time not known to security authorities as an Islamic extremist.
His
application was later rejected and he was slated last year for deportation to
Bulgaria, where he had first been registered under European Union rules as an
asylum seeker.
The regional
interior minister, Herbert Reul, denied media reports that Issa Al H had then
“vanished” but said it appeared his stay in Germany had outlasted legal
deadlines, meaning he could no longer be sent to another country.
Scholz in
early June told parliament he backed the deportation of violent, foreign-born
criminals even if they came from war-ravaged Syria or Afghanistan, in a
hardline stance announced days before European elections in which the AfD
performed well.
The shift in
position came after an Afghan asylum seeker allegedly killed a police officer
at a far-right rally, and in response to accusations from the right and the far
right that his government was lax on deportations.
The Afghan
case also prompted the federal interior minister, Nancy Faeser, to call for
stricter laws on carrying long blades in public amid a rise in knife violence.
However, the proposals were criticised within the government by the liberal
Free Democrats, who reportedly have dropped their opposition since the Solingen
attack.
Tino
Chrupalla, co-leader of the AfD, wrote in a post on X even before the alleged
assailant surrendered to police on Saturday: “A knife ban will not help in such
situations. Germany needs an immediate about-face in its migration and security
policy!”
The CDU
leader, Friedrich Merz, who is widely expected to be Scholz’s main challenger
in the general election in September 2025, called for a “turning point” in
Germany’s “naive” migration policy.
He sent a
letter to Scholz calling for a total stop to asylum seekers from Syria and
Afghanistan entering Germany. “After the terror attack in Solingen, it should
finally be clear: knives are not the problem but rather the people running
around with them,” he wrote.
Even before
the bloodshed in Solingen, opinion polls indicated that the AfD was likely to
emerge as the strongest party in all three states voting in September:
Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg.
CDU party
leaders said Merz and Scholz would meet later in the week to discuss possible
consequences from the Solingen attack.
On Sunday,
about 30 members of the youth wing of the AfD rallied in Solingen, met by a
counterprotest of a few hundred people defending diversity in the city. Police
broke up minor scuffles between the groups.
A sign
reading “love instead of hate” lay among the bouquets in memory of the victims
on Monday.
Solingen, a
city in western Germany near Cologne and Düsseldorf, has a population of
160,000 people, about 19% of whom are not German citizens, many of them the
descendants of “guest workers” who arrived in the 1960s and 70s. The city also
has a large community of dual citizens.
Speaking at
the news conference with Scholz, the North Rhine-Westphalia state premier,
Hendrik Wüst, pleaded with the extreme right not to exploit the tragedy, and
noted Solingen had bitter experience in recovering from trauma as the site of a
horrific neo-Nazi attack in 1993.
Amid a wave
of racist violence that shocked the country, far-right assailants set fire to a
home occupied by a large Turkish family, killing five people including three
children and injuring a further 14 people. The perpetrators were convicted and
given long prison sentences.
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