Bloody act in Solingen – New details reveal multiple organ failure

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared the asylum issue a top priority at the end of 2023. In an interview with Spiegel, he announced that he wanted to deport people on a “large scale.” Today, it can be argued that the otherwise silent Social Democrat probably spoke too much. Because in most cases, the announcement stood.

Since then, Germany has been hit by several attacks. Following the fatal knife attack in Mannheim in June, Scholz announced that he would once again make it possible to deport serious criminals and terrorist “threats” to Afghanistan and Syria. This has not been successful so far.

There are glaring shortcomings in the deportation process
Friday night came the next shock: at a city festival in Solingen (North Rhine-Westphalia), three people were killed with a knife. Eight people were injured, four of them seriously. The suspected perpetrator is a 26-year-old Syrian; IS has claimed responsibility for the bloody crime. The case mercilessly exposes the flaws in the system:

• As was announced on Sunday, the man should have been deported to Bulgaria last year because his asylum application was rejected. The Syrian entered the European Union via Bulgaria.
• However, on the day of his scheduled deportation, the 26-year-old was not found in his refugee accommodation. At the time, German police officers were not allowed to enter rooms in shared accommodation other than the room of the person being deported.
• The Syrian did not ‘go into hiding’, as Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) of the NRW announced, but stayed in refugee shelters again and again.
• It is still unclear why his absence had largely no consequences for him. After the failed deportation, the deadlines expired and Germany was now responsible for his case. In late 2023, the authorities granted him subsidiary protection, which refugees from civil war-torn Syria often receive.
• Now the question arises how persistently the attempt was made to get the man out of the country. In North Rhine-Westphalia, the Ministry of the Interior is not responsible for this process, but rather the Department of Family, Flight and Integration. Minister Josefine Paul (Greens) is currently trying to understand what went wrong here.

Union calls for an end to filming
In Germany, a debate has erupted over how the asylum process, from the application to possible deportation, could be reformed. For example, CDU leader Friedrich Merz advocated a radical halt to the reception of refugees from Syria and Afghanistan. He left open how this would be implemented legally.

Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder of the CDU sister party CSU called for stricter deportation practices for rejected people. Recently, cases of asylum seekers who went on holiday in their home countries despite their refugee status have also attracted attention in Germany.

CDU leader Merz outlines his asylum plan:

“I call on Scholz to work with us to make swift decisions that are consistently aimed at preventing further terrorist attacks. “We can deport people to Syria and Afghanistan, but we will no longer accept refugees from there,” Merz now increased the pressure on Chancellor Scholz.

SPD fires CDU
The ‘Ampel’ boss in turn demanded that the perpetrator be punished ‘to the fullest extent of the law’. Following the fatal knife attack in Solingen, Scholz announced on Monday that gun laws would soon be tightened. He followed up with another promise: “This must and will happen very quickly,” the SPD politician assured during his visit to Solingen.

And he said what he had already said after Mannheim: he now wanted to deport more quickly. If necessary, “with legal rules,” which doesn’t sound particularly groundbreaking. Progress must be made in the deportations of Dublin cases that were initially in other European countries. “It would certainly make sense to set up a task force that would study this carefully,” Scholz mused.

Through party leader Saskia Esken and SPD secretary general Kevin Kühnert, Scholz also dismissed CDU leader Merz. The opposition leader’s plans to stop the admission cannot be implemented because “the constitution, our basic order, contradicts this,” Kühnert explained in an interview. The answer cannot be to slam the door in the face of people fleeing the Islamists themselves, Kühnert argued.

His suggestion: “We need to keep an eye on hate preachers, especially online, we need to see how radicalization takes place.” Work is underway to deport intensive offenders, as promised by the Chancellor.

SPD leader finds attack uninstructive
It is also true that the alleged attacker from Solingen has not yet been identified as a “threat.” Because the authorities did not have the Syrian on their radar, the early warning systems for terrorism remained silent. Interior Minister Reul of NRW now wants to give the police more legal powers to gather information “in advance.” “In Germany, we have an incredibly hard time with that. I really don’t understand it anymore.”

Reul wants to help the police:

His words, however, are not well received by the Social Democrats. According to SPD party leader Esken, it is difficult to extract information from the Solingen case: “There is not much to learn from this attack because the perpetrator was not observed.” Her conclusion: the attention of the security authorities “is definitely there.” The federal government is not sitting still here. Her words left political observers confused.

Above all, the anonymity of Solingen is a sore point at the moment; reflection – and thus learning – is the order of the day. No one had this man, who should have been back in Bulgaria long ago, on their list. How should we respond to a danger that no one sees coming?