The German government was preparing for a difficult return to school on the budgetary front. After the terrorist attack that left three dead and eight injured in Solingen on Friday, August 23, during a festival, it is now caught up with the security challenge. A week before two regional elections where the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has a chance of coming out on top in the votes cast, the questions raised by this deadly attack are all the more delicate for Chancellor Olaf Scholz's coalition because the three parties that make it up do not agree on how to respond to it.
As for the alleged perpetrator of the attack, who surrendered to the police a little over twenty-four hours after the incident, we know that his name is Issa Al-H., that he has Syrian nationality, that he is 26 years old and that he has been living in Germany since 2022. The Islamic State organization claimed responsibility for the attack, although it is not known whether Issa Al-H. is linked to this organization or not. According to the weekly The Mirrorhe was, however, in an illegal situation in Germany, where his asylum application had been rejected and from where he should have been expelled to Bulgaria, a European Union country where his arrival had been registered and where he should have lodged his asylum application, under Community rules.
Not only did the German authorities not arrest him, but, according to the Spiegelthey even decided to place him under “subsidiary protection”, a status given to people able to prove that they are threatened in their country because of an armed conflict.
Upon learning of this, Friedrich Merz, the chairman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the main opposition force, reacted sharply, calling on the government not to “welcome more refugees” coming from “Syria and Afghanistan.” This demand was also made by the far-right AfD party, whose youth movement, Junge Alternative, called for a demonstration in Solingen on Sunday 25 August, under the slogan: “Remigration saves lives”. A slogan that explicitly echoes the project discussed at a secret meeting in Potsdam, near Berlin, where several figures from the German and Austrian far right met at the end of 2023 to discuss a “remigration” plan aimed at expelling millions of immigrants and German citizens of foreign origin to North Africa. A “secret plan” whose disclosure, in January, by the investigation site Correctivbrought more than 4 million Germans out onto the streets, revolted by such a project.
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Source: Lemonde
