By Rachel More
BERLIN (Reuters) – The arrest of an Afghan asylum seeker suspected of killing two people in a knife attack targeting children in a German park has fueled calls for a much tougher stance on migration and boosted the campaign for Germany’s Feb. 23 national election.
The suspect, a 28-year-old Afghan national with a history of violent behavior who was receiving psychiatric treatment, was scheduled to appear before a judge Thursday afternoon. The judge will decide on pretrial detention.
The suspect’s asylum application was closed and he said he would leave Germany voluntarily in December, but he did not leave and remained under treatment, the Bavarian interior minister said.
A two-year-old boy of Moroccan origin and a 41-year-old man who tried to intervene in the attack that took place on Wednesday in a park in the Bavarian city of Aschaffenburg died from their injuries. Three more people were injured.
“My wish list would be that we have a proper deportation policy, that the people who are obliged to leave the country also leave this country,” said Katrin Burger, an organizer of a protest rally held Wednesday night in Aschaffenburg.
The stabbings add to a spate of violent attacks in Germany that have heightened concerns about security and migration and boosted support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which polls put in second place behind the conservatives.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose Social Democrats (SPD) are lagging behind, called an emergency meeting with his Interior Minister Nancy Faeser and security authorities late Wednesday, calling the attack an “unbelievable act of terrorism.”
“I’m sick and tired of seeing these kinds of acts of violence happening here every few weeks. By perpetrators who actually came to us to find protection here,” Scholz said in a statement.
“The false sense of tolerance is completely inappropriate. The authorities must work to find out why the attacker was still in Germany in the first place. Consequences must follow immediately from the findings – talking is not enough.”
‘POLITICAL ANSWERS’
Friedrich Merz, the pre-election favorite and leader of the Christian Democratic Conservatives (CDU), said: “This moves us, this hurts us, this requires clear political answers.”
But some Germans blame the CDU, and especially Merz’s predecessor and long-time chancellor Angela Merkel, for encouraging a large influx of asylum seekers and migrants, mainly from the Middle East and Afghanistan, in 2015.
AfD leader Tino Chrupalla, whose party has received the backing of tech billionaire Elon Musk and was the only German party leader to attend US President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday, called for a change in asylum policy.
“Dangerous asylum seekers must be deported. We want to maintain diplomatic contacts with Afghanistan for this purpose. Dangerous parks must be cleared of criminals and made available again to children and families,” Chrupalla said on X.
The liberal Free Democrats have also called for closer contacts with the Afghan Taliban, following Austria’s example, to facilitate the removal of failed asylum seekers.
Investigators into Wednesday’s attack have been focusing heavily on the suspect’s mental illness, Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said, adding that an initial search of his asylum accommodation had turned up no evidence of radical Islamist sympathies.
