After the terrible attack in Solingen that left three people dead and eight injured, the Chancellor visited the city. He seemed shocked and now wanted to act quickly.
After the fatal knife attack in Solingen, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced swift consequences and demanded that the perpetrator be punished severely. The firearms regulations in Germany, particularly for the use of knives, must be tightened again, said the SPD politician at the scene of the attack. “That should and will happen very quickly.” The deportation of people without a right of residence must also be accelerated.
Scholz said he was “angry and furious” about this act. “It must be punished quickly and severely.” The Chancellor spoke of a terrible crime. “This was terrorism, terrorism against all of us, which threatens our lives and our community.” This will never be tolerated or accepted.
Scholz arrived in Solingen in the morning. Together with NRW Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst and his Interior Minister Herbert Reul (both CDU) and Mayor Tim Kurzbach (SPD), he laid white roses at the place where the victims of the attack are remembered. They then spoke to emergency services and first responders. Scholz then called them “great people”.
Debate about admission freezes
Shortly after the attack, a dispute began over the consequences to be drawn from the knife attack. One week before the state elections in Saxony and Thuringia, CDU leader Friedrich Merz called for a freeze on the admission of refugees from Syria and Afghanistan to Germany. In his email newsletter “MerzMail” he wrote: “After the terrorist attack in Solingen, it should now be clear: it is not the knives that are the problem, but the people who walk around with them. In the majority of cases, these are refugees, and in the majority of the attacks, there are Islamist motives behind them.”
Union parliamentary group vice-chairman Jens Spahn (CDU) spoke out in favor of closing borders for irregular migrants. He told the “Rheinische Post” (Monday): “For years, hundreds of young men from Syria and Afghanistan have been coming to Germany and Europe every day. This must finally end.”
Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) said on ARD that criminals must be arrested immediately and leave the country, especially to Syria and Afghanistan. The police must be given more opportunities for checks.
Chancellor Scholz had already announced in June, after the deadly knife attack in Mannheim, that the deportation of serious criminals and terrorist threats to Afghanistan and Syria would again be possible.
SPD General Secretary Kühnert: Admission freeze not legally possible
SPD General Secretary Kevin Kühnert rejected Merz’s demand for a general ban on accepting refugees from Syria and Afghanistan. This is contrary to the Basic Law, for example the individual right to asylum, he said on ARD’s “Morgenmagazin”.
“The answer cannot be that we now slam the door in the faces of people who are fleeing from Islamists because they are being persecuted by them for their way of life,” said Kühnert. We must now look into why the repatriation of the suspected perpetrator to Bulgaria did not work out.
What is the mood after the knife attack in Solingen?
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Kühnert stressed that the traffic light coalition is already working on solutions for the deportation of serious offenders to Syria and Afghanistan. It is also making progress on gun laws and knife bans. Now the focus must be on the problem of the radicalization of individual offenders. “This requires a major joint effort from the federal and state governments.”
CDU interior politician Alexander Throm countered Kühnert in the ARD “Morgenmagazin” that very few applicants were granted asylum because of the protection provided for in the Basic Law. Most, especially those from Afghanistan and Syria, were granted subsidiary protection because they were not personally persecuted or threatened. There was no longer any fighting in Afghanistan, and only localised fighting in Syria. “That is why subsidiary protection for Afghans and Syrians must be abolished.
Suspected Solingen perpetrator in custody
On Friday evening, three people were killed with a knife at a town festival in Solingen, North Rhine-Westphalia. Eight people were injured, four of them seriously. The suspected perpetrator is a 26-year-old Syrian who is now in custody. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office is investigating him for murder and on suspicion of membership in the terrorist group Islamic State (IS). The group claimed responsibility for the attack and released a video on Sunday that is said to show the perpetrator. When it was recorded and whether it is actually the perpetrator has not yet been clearly established.
Solingen
Attack at the folk festival – impressions from a city in shock
As “Spiegel” reported, the suspect came to Germany at the end of 2022 and applied for asylum. The security authorities had not previously known him as an Islamist extremist. This information was confirmed to the German Press Agency. The suspect’s asylum application was rejected. He was therefore due to be deported to Bulgaria last year. He had entered the European Union via the country. According to “Welt”, the deportation failed because he went into hiding in Germany.
North Rhine-Westphalia’s Prime Minister Wüst is also calling for an investigation within the authorities. “There are a lot of questions. A lot of authorities are involved. This needs to be clarified and we need to speak plainly if something has gone wrong,” he said in the “Aktuelle Stunde” on WDR television. In the ZDF “heute journal”, Wüst said: “If something has gone wrong somewhere, at any authority, whether locally in Bielefeld, in Paderborn or at state or federal authorities, then the truth needs to be put on the table.”
NRW Interior Minister Reul said on the ARD program “Caren Miosga” that the suspected attacker had not gone into hiding in the legal sense. He was simply not there on the day he was supposed to be picked up. “Otherwise, he was always and often in this facility.” On Deutschlandfunk, Reul called for stricter border controls at Germany’s external borders and for refugees to be turned away. “I don’t think there is any other way.”
According to an overview by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the attack in Solingen would be the most serious attack in Germany committed with suspected Islamist motives since the attack on a Christmas market in Berlin in December 2016, which left 13 dead and 64 injured.
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
