German Chancellor promises faster deportations after Solingen attack | Germany

In response to the fatal stabbing in Solingen, Chancellor Olaf Scholz has promised faster enforcement of deportation regulations and stricter gun laws. In the run-up to important state elections, the extreme right took advantage of public outrage.

Scholz laid a single white rose at the scene of Friday evening's shooting, which the terrorist group “Islamic State” claimed responsibility for. In the shooting, a Syrian asylum seeker is said to have killed three people and injured eight who were taking part in a street festival to mark the city's 650th anniversary.

After meeting with regional officials and listening to “very moving reports” from rescue workers who cared for the victims, Scholz told reporters he was “angry” about the killings but would not allow them to tear German society apart.

“That was terrorism – terrorism against all of us, threatening all of our lives, our coexistence, our way of life,” Social Democrat Scholz told reporters. “That is also the intention of the people who plan and carry out such attacks, and we will never accept that.”

Scholz, whose unpopular government has faced fierce criticism from the conservative opposition CDU and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) over migration policy and crime ahead of three state elections next month, said his centre-left-led coalition was ready to “do everything in our power to ensure that such things never happen again”.

According to Scholz, this would include a reform of gun laws and an examination of how rejected asylum seekers could be sent back more quickly – either to their country of origin, if this is considered safe, or to the European country in which they first applied for asylum.

The suspect, identified by the Federal Prosecutor's Office as Issa Al H, 26, whose last name was not published for privacy reasons, came to Germany in late 2022 and applied for asylum, reported the news magazine Der Spiegel. According to media reports, he was not known to the security authorities as an Islamic extremist at the time.

His application was later rejected and he was due to be deported to Bulgaria last year, where he had initially been registered as an asylum seeker under European Union rules.

Federal Interior Minister Herbert Reul denied media reports that Issa Al H. had subsequently “disappeared”. However, he said that his stay in Germany had apparently exceeded the legal time limit, meaning that he could no longer be deported to another country.

At the beginning of June, Scholz declared in parliament that he supported the deportation of violent criminals born abroad, even if they came from war-torn countries such as Syria or Afghanistan. In doing so, he announced a tough stance just days before the European elections, in which the AfD performed well.

This change of course came after an Afghan asylum seeker allegedly killed a police officer at a far-right rally and in response to accusations from the far-right and right-wing camps that his government was negligent in deportations.

The Afghan case also prompted Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser to call for stricter laws on carrying long knives in public in light of the increasing knife violence. However, the proposals were criticized within the government by the liberal Free Democrats, who have reportedly given up their opposition since the attack in Solingen.

Before the alleged perpetrator was handed over on Saturday, AfD coordinator Tino Chrupalla wrote in a post on X: “A knife ban does not help in such situations. Germany needs an immediate turnaround in migration and security policy!”

CDU leader Friedrich Merz, who is expected to be Scholz's main challenger in the federal election in September 2025, called for a “turning point” in Germany's “naive” migration policy.

In a letter to Scholz, he called for a complete ban on asylum seekers from Syria and Afghanistan entering Germany. “After the terrorist attack in Solingen, it should finally be clear: it is not the knives that are the problem, but the people who walk around with them,” he wrote.

Even before the bloodshed in Solingen, opinion polls indicated that the AfD would likely become the strongest party in all three federal states that vote in September – Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg.

The CDU party leaders said Merz and Scholz would meet during the week to discuss possible consequences of the Solingen attack.

On Sunday, around 30 members of the AfD youth organization gathered in Solingen, where they were confronted by a counter-demonstration of several hundred people who were standing up for diversity in the city. The police broke up minor scuffles between the groups.

On Monday, a sign reading “Love instead of hate” was placed between the bouquets to commemorate the victims.

Solingen, a city in western Germany near Cologne and Düsseldorf, has a population of 160,000, of whom about 19% do not have German citizenship. Many of them are descendants of “guest workers” who came to the city in the 1960s and 70s. The city also has a large community of people with dual citizenship.

At the press conference with Scholz, North Rhine-Westphalia's Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst asked the extreme right not to exploit the tragedy and pointed out that Solingen, as the site of a terrible neo-Nazi attack in 1993, had had bitter experiences in dealing with trauma.

Amid a wave of racist violence that has shaken the country, far-right attackers set fire to the home of a large Turkish family, killing five people, including three children, and injuring another 14. The perpetrators were convicted and sentenced to long prison terms.