Some 50 people deemed serious Islamist threats remain in Germany despite receiving deportation orders similar to the one issued to the man behind last month’s attack on a Berlin Christmas market.
Anis Amri (24), the Tunisian perpetrator of the attack that killed 12, arrived in Germany in 2015. His asylum application was rejected last summer and a court ordered his deportation for using 14 different aliases. He remained in the country for technical reasons, as have 50 others among 550 people with Islamist links whom German authorities classify as “dangerous persons”.
German authorities say intercepted communications from these dangerous persons, even if they claim to be planning attacks, is not sufficient to deport them under current laws, and that courts require concrete proof of a looming attack.
Authorities in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) say they were aware of Amri’s readiness to act for Islamic State, his multiple aliases, resulting welfare fraud and regular trips to Berlin, which breached the terms of his asylum application. But they declined to intervene in order to not draw attention to the fact that he was under full-time observation by NRW intelligence.
When Amri moved full-time to Berlin last autumn, however, observation ceased and he disappeared from the authorities’ radar.
Amid growing questions over the Amri investigation, Germany's Bild tabloid asked on Friday: "Why will no one say mistakes were made?"
Asylum quotas
The Berlin attack, and subsequent revelations, have aggravated a dispute over asylum quotas inside chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling alliance.
Dr Merkel and her Christian Democrats (CDU) are opposed to such a move, saying fixed quotas contradict Germany’s asylum obligations under international law. But Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (CSU) – on the front lines of the 2015 refugee crisis – says it will topple its alliance with the CDU in autumn’s federal election unless binding quotas are introduced.
Federal development minister Gerd Müller, from the CSU, has suggested re-registering more than one million asylum seekers who have come to Germany in the past two years because many were not fingerprinted in the initial surge of arrivals, he said, thus opening the door to today’s welfare fraud and security concerns.
A year after Vienna introduced its own asylum quotas, meanwhile, Austrian defence minister Hans Peter Doskozil has suggested an EU-wide asylum cap. The Austrian proposals would introduce a single asylum quota for everyone arriving at the EU’s outer borders, with asylum application processed outside the bloc in safe countries such as Jordan and Uzbekistan.
The Austrians suggest that refused asylum seekers who cannot be legally returned, for instance if their homeland is at war, should also be transferred to EU-UN camps in northern Africa.
German proposals
The Viennese proposals chime with similar proposals for external asylum camps proposed earlier this week by Berlin.
Almost three weeks after the Christmas market attacks, the bitter political debate over consequences has opened up divisions in Dr Merkel’s ruling coalition.
As well as the asylum cap row, Dr Merkel’s Social Democratic (SPD) junior partners are demanding a “zero tolerance” approach to extremist mosques and preachers. However, SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel has warned that austerity measures are as much of a boon to Islamist extremism as lax law-and-order policies.
"If we are serious about the battle against Islamism and terrorism, then it has become a cultural battle," Mr Gabriel told Der Spiegel magazine. "We have to strengthen social cohesion and ensure that city districts and villages don't become dilapidated and that people don't become radicalised."
