Aschaffenburg attack: German mayor warns against 'hatred'

Aschaffenburg Mayor Jürgen Herzing said he was "shaken up" after a deadly stabbing in his city and urged calm as the attack ramps up Germany's debate on migration ahead of elections on February 23. 

The attack on Wednesday in the southern German state of Bavaria left a 2-year-old Moroccan boy and 41-year-old German man dead and wounded three others, including a 2-year-old Syrian girl.

A judge on Thursday ordered the suspect be placed in a psychiatric hospital. 

Herzing sees 'parallels' with earlier attacks 

Herzing said at a wreath-laying service in the city that there were "parallels" with other attacks, referencing deadly incidents in the German cities of Magdeburg, Solingen and Würzburg.

In each case, a migrant "injures and kills innocent people," he said. 

Police have taken a 28-year-old man from Afghanistan into custody over the attack.

The suspect had a past of violent behavior and was receiving psychiatric treatment, according to police. Moreover, he had said he would leave Germany voluntarily in December but stayed in the country while still getting psychiatric help.     

"We can and must never attribute the act of one individual to an entire population group," Herzing said, noting the city's residents' feelings of anger, grief and "thoughts of revenge."

"I feel as if my own child had died — or my brother had died or been injured," Herzing said. "I think it's the same for many others." 

Some of the victims in the stabbing came from migrant backgrounds, with the 2-year-old who died in the attack coming from Morocco. A girl who was injured came from Syria. 

Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Hermann said the suspect was slated for deportation last June but "errors and problems" ultimately made it difficult to organize his return.  

German opposition leader calls for new asylum policy

German opposition leader Friedrich Merz of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), meanwhile, said Germany needs to overhaul its migration and asylum policies after the attack.

"We are faced with the tatters of 10 years of misguided asylum and migration policy of Germany," Merz said, calling for a stop to all illegal entries to the country.

He said Germany should use national law to step in for "dysfunctional" EU asylum law while urging permanent controls of all German borders.      

Merz wants to implement these policies if he becomes chancellor after the February election. The CDU is currently leading in most opinion polls, with surveys showing them receiving between 28% to 34% of support in the German public.  

Some Germans blame Merz's CDU for the state of migration to Germany. In 2015, former CDU Chancellor Angela Merkel allowed over a million asylum-seekers, primarily from the Middle East and Afghanistan, to cross into Germany.

Bavarian Premier Markus Söder, the head of the CDU's sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), said the focus should be "security first" after the Aschaffenburg stabbing.  

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which is second in most election surveys, has called for "dangerous" asylum-seekers to be deported. AfD leader in the Bundestag Tino Chrupalla said Germany must "maintain diplomatic contacts with Afghanistan" to facilitate deportations, urging closer cooperation between the German government and the Afghan Taliban on the issue.  

German interior minister says 'working hard' to deport criminals to Afghanistan

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, a member of the center-left Social Democratic Party, said the government is "working hard to deport further criminals to Afghanistan." The German government deported people last year to Afghanistan, despite human rights concerns under Taliban rule. 

Faeser also criticized the EU's Dublin Regulation, which says an asylum-seeker's application must be processed in the first country of arrival. The suspect had arrived in Germany via Bulgaria. 

"We are already seeing once again that the Dublin system no longer works," Faeser said.  

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who also belongs to the SPD and is standing for another term in the chancellery, had earlier called the stabbing "an unbelievable act of terror."

"The authorities must work flat out to find out why the attacker was still in Germany in the first place. Consequence must follow immediately from the findings  — it is not enough to talk," Scholz said, adding he is "sick and tired" of "such acts of violence." 

 wd/nm (Reuters, AFP)