Germany has announced that it will be tightening its border control in the wake of a recent fatal stabbing in Solingen.
Two men and a woman were killed at a festival celebrating diversity where a failed asylum seekers that was to be deported allegedly went on a throat cutting spree.
The accused is a Syrian national with the Islamic State terror group claiming responsibility for the attack.
Eight others were injured in the incident which took place roughly three months after a police officer was stabbed to death allegedly by another failed asylum seeker from Afghanistan in Mannheim.
Sulaiman Ataee (25) was shot by police after allegedly going on a stabbing spree at a political gathering and fatally stabbing a 29-year-old male police officer in an attack that was caught by a livestream camera.
Now German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has come under pressure amid a voter surge towards anti-mass immigration party Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) in recent local elections.
The new border controls will be implemented from the 16th of September and will last for an initial period of six months.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser says the Bundestag is “taking a hard line” against irregular migration, and that she believes the checks will reduce Islamist extremism and cross-border crime.
“We are doing everything in our power to protect the people of our country against these threats,” she added.
Germany took in over one million people from Middle Eastern countries like Syria during the 2015-2016 migrant crisis.
The country has been experiencing rising levels of crime over the subsequent years with the Berlin police chief saying that the demographic of those committing most of the knife crime in the city was ‘young, male, and migrant’.
As Gript previously reported, Barbara Slowik said, “The police crime statistics make a distinction between German and non-German suspects. And in recent years we have seen an increase in violent crime overall, as well as in non-German criminals in the capital. Non-Germans are overrepresented. To put it bluntly: According to our figures, the violence in Berlin is young, male and has a non-German background. This also applies to knife violence.”
Leader of Germany’s opposition CDU party Friedrich Merz recently said that most of the stabbings in Germany were committed by those with an Islamist motive and urged Chancellor Scholz to stop allowing asylum seekers from Syria and Afghanistan into the country.
As Gript previously reported, Mertz said Merz said pressures placed on Germany are such that the situation was getting close to a “national emergency”.
Criticising the Chancellor for the lack of decisive action in the wake of the stabbings he said, “The crime is one of a series of knife attacks that have killed numerous people in Germany in recent months. The coalition has been discussing – and arguing – for several weeks about tightening gun laws and banning knives.”he said.
Merz added, “After the terrorist act in Solingen, it should now be finally clear: it’s 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 crimes there are Islamist motives behind them.”
Merz also called for anyone with refugee status in Germany who visits their home country to lose their status.