German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has vowed to step up deportations of rejected asylum seekers after it emerged the suspect in Friday’s knife attack was a Syrian who was due to be removed.
Mr Scholz made the remarks while visiting a makeshift memorial site for the victims of the attack in Solingen, which saw a suspected Islamic extremist stab three people to death and injure eight more.
The man, who turned himself in on Saturday night, was supposed to be deported to Bulgaria last year, as that was the first EU country in which he set foot.
But according to German media reports, the deportation never happened because he disappeared for a period.
The attack sparked a fierce debate about immigration in Germany, which in May was still recorded as the EU country receiving the highest amount of asylum applications, according to the European Union Agency for Asylum.
In 2023, it received nearly a third of all applications lodged to EU countries, Norway and Switzerland.
The chancellor said he was “furious” about the attack on Friday night, which happened as the western city celebrated its 650th anniversary.
He said of the attack: “We must do everything to ensure that such things never happen in our country, if possible.”
Mr Scholz said that would include toughening knife laws in particular “and this should and will happen very quickly”.
Interior minister Nancy Faeser earlier this month proposed allowing only knives with a blade measuring up to 6cm (nearly 2.4in) to be carried in public, rather than the length of 12cm (4.7in) that is allowed now.
“We will have to do everything so that those who aren’t allowed to stay in Germany are sent back and deported,” he said, adding that “we have massively expanded the possibilities to carry out such deportations”.
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Mr Scholz said there had been a 30% increase in deportations this year already, but “we will look very closely at how we can contribute to raising these figures even further”.
The chancellor had in June already vowed to resume deportations of criminals from war-torn Syria and Afghanistan after a knife attack by an Afghan immigrant in Mannheim at the end of May left one police officer dead and four more people injured.