Germany: Munich car ‘attack’ injures 30, suspect detained – DW (English)
Source: DW (English)
At least 30 people were injured after a car drove into a trade union march in Munich. Chancellor Olaf Scholz has called for the suspect, an Afghan national legally in Germany, to be deported.
Contrary to earlier reports, Bavarian ministers have said that the suspect was not subject to deportation and was in possession of a valid residency permit
A note to our readers: this blog began as coverage of the latest German election news, but has since switched to cover the attack in Munich.
Click here for Thursday’s latest on the upcoming parliamentary election.
These live updates have been closed. Thank you for reading.
Alice Weidel, the chancellor candidate for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), has insisted that the 24-year-old Afghan national detained on suspicion of driving his car into a trade union march in Munich on Thursday would never even have entered Germany had her party been in power.
“It’s always the same pattern: an asylum-seeker comes to Germany, his asylum application is rejected and he’s not deported,” she said during a live studio talk with voters on public broadcaster ZDF, insisting: “Under the AfD, he wouldn’t have been here in the first place.”
Weidel placed blame for the incident at the door of Bavarian Premier Markus Söder (CSU), saying: “The question which politicians need to face, especially Söder, is: What was the man even doing here?”
For transparency, Weidel was speaking live just moments after Söder had clarified that the suspect did have a valid residency permit and was not subject to a deportation order as reported earlier (see previous entry below).
“I don’t understand these political failures. It’s always the same and people are fed up,” Weidel continued. “They want solutions, they want secure borders, they want strict enforcement of law and order and they want the deportation of illegal migrants and criminals.”
Weidel then faced her first audience question from a man who runs a company that produces highly specialist plastic brain implants, and where 21% of the workforce comes from 27 different countries.
“A diverse and global company policy has led to innovation that we export to 81 different countries,” he said, adding that many of the firm’s employees now feel afraid and unwelcome.
After first making a point of not using gender-neutral language because “I don’t gender,” Weidel responded that the AfD only wants to deport what she called illegal migrants and criminals.
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
The Afghan citizen who injured at least 30 people when he drove a car into a trade union march in Munich on Thursday had a valid German residency and work permit and, contrary to initial reports, no criminal record. Nor was he subject to a deportation order.
“According to our current information, the perpetrator’s presence [in Germany] was absolutely legal,” Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann told the dpa news agency.
According to Herrmann, the man, now 24, arrived in Germany as an accompanied, underage refugee in 2016. His asylum application was rejected in 2020 and a deportation order issued. This, however, was overturned in Munich in April 2021 and a residency permit issued several months later.
Herrmann said the man then attended school and completed an apprenticeship before working as a store detective for two security firms. A misunderstanding regarding a criminal record emerged because of the man’s presence at several shoplifting trials.
“He wasn’t there as a suspect but as a witness,” said Herrmann.
Bavarian Premier Markus Söder, like Herrmann a member of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), told broadcaster ZDF: “The perpetrator was previously rather inconspicuous. He was not subject to deportation.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has suggested that data protection laws are preventing German authorities from identifying potential perpetrators of terrorist acts early.
Scholz was answering questions from a live studio audience on German public broadcaster ZDF on Thursday evening ahead of the federal elections on February 23, and was inevitably asked about the attack in Munich earlier in the day.
One resident of the city of Solingen, where three people were killed and eight more injured in a knife attack in August 2024, said she and her family felt “afraid” and asked Scholz if he carries responsibility for the “murders” which have taken place?
“Every single one of these acts is unbearable,” Scholz responded, saying it was the responsibility of every politician to see what can be done.
“In my opinion, domestic security must take priority,” he said. “We need to trip these people up before they can act. We can’t look into what everyone is saying but these perpetrators do tend to make comments which should set off alarms. We can’t allow data protection to stand in the way of that.”
He said that repeat off
Read more: Click here