A 26-year-old Syrian asylum seeker is in custody after allegedly admitting to brutally killing three people – two men, aged 56 and 67, and a 56-year-old woman – and seriously injuring six more at a Christian music festival in Solingen, Germany on Friday.
Left-wing politicians, who stand to lose to the right-wing Alternative for Germany in state elections next month, have expressed concern that the avoidable bloodshed will embolden criticism of Germany’s immigration and refugee policies.
According to According to the German magazine Der Spiegel, witnesses reportedly heard the suspect, Issa al-Hasan, shouting “Allah is great” as he indiscriminately stabbed passers-by. Hasan allegedly tried to kill as many Germans he deemed Christians or “non-believers” as possible before covering himself with the blood of his victims and fleeing.
Hasan reportedly turned himself in to a police patrol late on Saturday night with his clothes covered in blood and admitted to the crime.
Police arrested two people, including a 36-year-old man, at the asylum seeker housing complex. It is unclear what links the others arrested may have had to Hasan or his plot.
The terrorist group ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack on a “Christian gathering in the German city of Solingen.”
Reported Telegraph.
The terrorist group circulated a video on its propaganda channels showing the alleged attacker brandishing a knife and explaining his motives. The terrorists appeared to want revenge for the alleged killings of Muslims in Iraq, Syria and Bosnia, as well as revenge against the “Palestinian people”, Spiegel reported.
The terrorist also says in the video that he is from Deir ez-Zor in eastern Syria, where ISIS still has a base.
“This should be pretty clear: the problem isn’t the knives, it’s the people who carry them.”
The last time ISIS claimed responsibility for a terror attack in Germany was in December 2016, when a Tunisian-born Islamist militant whose asylum application had been rejected deliberately drove a truck into a Berlin Christmas market, killing 12 people and injuring 56. A 13th victim later died from his injuries.
Perpetrator of the 2016 Christmas attack
I pledged my allegiance Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s rule as the Islamic State caliphate came to an end in 2019 in a U.S. military raid authorized by President Donald Trump.
Hasan, the suspected gunman in Friday’s stabbing, reportedly entered Germany in December 2022 and applied for asylum, but under the EU’s refugee recognition system he is ineligible.
Dublin RegulationIn this case, Bulgaria would be held responsible for him.
Germany and Bulgaria agreed to deport the Syrian, but Hasan managed to hide from the authorities.
Spiegel
Shown An arrest warrant for Hasan was ultimately never issued, in part because there were not enough facilities to accommodate those scheduled for deportation. Hasan was not deported by the August 2023 deportation deadline, and thus officially became a German problem.
Hasan subsequently received the special protection that Syrians often receive in Germany and was deployed to Solingen in September 2023.
As of July, German authorities had reportedly requested the transfer of at least 43,000 people to other EU countries, but had only carried out deportations of 3,500.
The anti-Christian terror attack came just months after Afghan immigrant Sulaiman Atai stabbed a German at an anti-jihad rally in Mannheim. It is considered a knife-free zone.Ataiye stabbed multiple people and then fatally slit the throat of a police officer, who was later shot dead by another police officer.
Friedrich Merz, leader of the Christian Democratic Union and the opposition in the Bundestag,
attention on sunday:
The attack is one in a series of knife attacks that have claimed many lives in Germany in recent months. Coalition forces have been debating and arguing for weeks about stricter gun control and a ban on knives. After the terrorist attack in Solingen, it is now clear that the problem is not the knives, but the people who carry them. In most cases, these are refugees, and the majority of the attacks have Islamist motives behind them.
Merz called on Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany’s left-leaning Social Democrats to “join us in taking swiftly and without delay decisions aimed consistently at preventing future terrorist attacks like those that took place in our country last Friday. We can forcibly return people to Syria or Afghanistan, but we will not accept any more refugees from these countries.”
Scholz then
attention Regarding X, he said: “Islamists endanger the peaceful coexistence of Christians, Jews and Muslims. We will take all harsh measures against them and will not stop persecuting them.”
Despite Scholz’s bullish rhetoric online, his party appears unwilling to take any meaningful action.
“So, naturally, we’re all very afraid that the right wing is going to become more and more powerful.”
German publication “Junge Freiheit” Reported Scholz’s secretary-general, Kevin Kuehnert, suggested Merz’s proposal to suspend the admission of asylum seekers from Syria and Afghanistan was legally impossible.
In the wake of such terror attacks, Kuehnert appeared to argue that Germany “cannot close its doors in the faces of people fleeing Islamists.”
Nancy Faser, another leftist who serves in the Scholz government as Germany’s interior minister, said: expressed concern Islamic terrorist attacks could cause divisions within the country.
Solingen City Council Member
Simone Lammert said Euronews: “I’ve just heard that the far-right youth party is talking about uniting here today. Of course, we’re all very afraid that the right is becoming more and more powerful. Of course, that’s never the right way to go. We have to ask the tough questions, and, you know, racism is never the answer.”
Germany’s current political establishment appears unwilling to tackle the problem of violent crime committed by immigrants, but it actively pursues critics of immigration.
Blaze News previously reported that Marie-Therese Kaiser, a member of the right-wing Alternative for Germany party, was convicted of a hate crime in May for sharing statistics about a disproportionate number of gang rape cases perpetrated by immigrants, particularly Afghan nationals, and questioning whether multiculturalism means embracing rape culture.
Following the AfD’s strong performance in June’s elections, a Bavarian court
The verdict was given The country’s domestic intelligence agency may monitor the party’s local chapters as suspected extremist groups.
The 22nd chamber of the Düsseldorf Administrative Court, not far from Solingen, said last month that joining the AfD would mean German citizens would no longer be able to own firearms.
Nicole Hoechst, AfD member of parliament Tweeted “Thousands of people are victims of knife attacks every year in Germany. Those who continue to vote for the CDU, CSU, Greens, SPD, FDP, Left Party and BSW are choosing life as usual. Change can only come from us,” he said on Saturday.
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