(Solingen) German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is traveling to Solingen on Monday to the scene of a knife attack in which a Syrian man suspected of having links to the Islamic State (IS) organization was arrested, rekindling the debate on migration policy in the country.
Friday night’s attack, which left three dead and eight injured during local festivities, increases pressure on the head of government a week before high-stakes regional elections in two eastern German states.
After a day on the run, a 26-year-old Syrian man turned himself in to authorities on Saturday evening and, according to police, declared that he was “responsible” for the crime.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the attacker had acted “to avenge the Muslims of Palestine and elsewhere,” according to a statement from the jihadist group sent through its propaganda outlet Amaq.
The suspect wanted to “kill as many people as possible,” said the federal prosecutor’s office in Karlsruhe, which on Sunday reported “strong suspicions of membership” of the jihadist organisation Islamic State.
“He stabbed festival visitors several times and in a targeted manner in the back, neck and torso,” the prosecution described.
PHOTO THOMAS KIENZLE, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
Members of a special police unit escort a man suspected of being responsible for the Solingen stabbing attack from a helicopter to the federal prosecutor’s office in Karlsruhe on August 25.
The suspect, designated by the courts as Issa Al H., arrived in the country in December 2022, according to several German media outlets, and was subject to an expulsion measure to Bulgaria, a European Union state where his entry had been registered and where he should have filed his asylum application, under Community rules.
” Chaos ”
According to German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, he was not on the lists of Islamist extremists considered dangerous.
In recent years, Germany has been the scene of several jihadist attacks, the deadliest of which, a truck attack in December 2016 on a Christmas market in Berlin, left 12 dead.
Olaf Scholz is to pay tribute to the victims of the Solingen attack this morning. Near the scene of the tragedy, bouquets of flowers, candles and messages bear witness to the emotion that has gripped the city of some 160,000 inhabitants.
PHOTO ELENA COVALENCO, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz
Two men aged 56 and 67 and a 56-year-old woman were killed among thousands of spectators attending a concert.
The Solingen Festival was to celebrate the 650th anniversary over three days.e anniversary of this city in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, not far from Düsseldorf and Cologne.
The attack has reignited the debate over migration and public security policy.
The far-right AfD party, which is well placed to achieve an unprecedented score in regional elections next weekend in two former communist GDR states, Saxony and Thuringia, has accused successive governments of causing “chaos” by welcoming too many immigrants.
The party called for “an offensive on expulsions.”
Friedrich Merz, the leader of the conservative CDU, the main opposition party, urged the government to “stop taking in refugees” from “Syria and Afghanistan”.
Olaf Scholz’s coalition had already been under pressure for several weeks to resume deportations of criminals to Afghanistan and Syria, two countries for which Germany had declared a moratorium due to the internal political situation.
Leading figures in the Social Democrats and Greens have been in favour of tougher deportation rules since a 25-year-old Afghan stabbed a police officer in Mannheim, western Germany, in late May. The attack, which targeted an anti-Islam rally and was suspected of having Islamist motives, left five others dead and injured.
Vice Chancellor Habeck proposed tightening gun laws on Sunday: “Nobody in Germany needs bladed weapons in public. We are not in the Middle Ages.”