The Syrian Issa al-Hasan should have been deported long ago. But he was not found at home and the deadline for his transfer passed. This case is representative of many others.
The 26-year-old Solingen attacker should actually have left Germany long ago. The authorities wanted to deport him, and officers once even stood outside the door of his accommodation in Paderborn to pick him up. But they did not find him, and the matter then fizzled out.
What went wrong here is a typical example of the weaknesses of the German asylum system, which makes it very easy for people who pose a threat to evade deportation.
Before Issa al-Hasan came to Germany in 2022, he entered Bulgaria. There he set foot on European soil for the first time and was officially registered. Bulgaria would therefore have been responsible for him under the Dublin system. But he was allowed to move on. In Germany, the man applied for asylum, but his application was rejected.
After the first failed attempt to deport him to Bulgaria, the officials could have tried again. But instead, the immigration authorities “did nothing further,” the “Welt” newspaper quoted security sources as saying.
If the officials had tried again and failed to find him, he might have been registered as an absconder or fugitive. The authorities would then have had 18 months instead of just six to find al-Hasan and deport him to Bulgaria. According to the “Welt”, Bulgaria had already given its consent to the deportation of Issa al-Hasan from Germany. Why the authorities did not use this instrument is still unknown. Were they overwhelmed by the case?
In any case, Al-Hasan waited the prescribed six months – and only then reported back to the authorities. How did he know that he could no longer be deported after six months? The Bild newspaper suspects that the man may have received legal advice or been informed of the deadlines by the refugee council.
This is at least plausible, because in Germany numerous non-governmental organizations or associations such as Pro Asyl advise refugees on how they can avoid deportation.
Four days after the deadline had expired, al-Hasan withdrew his appeal against being transferred to Bulgaria. This meant that responsibility for the Syrian’s asylum application had now been transferred to Germany.
The immigration authorities assigned al-Hasan to a shared accommodation in Solingen. He received subsidiary protection in Germany, which protects him from being deported to his homeland. He carried out the attack on Friday evening just a few hundred meters from his home.
Germany has experienced attacks by asylum seekers since 2016
The attack in Solingen is one of a series of Islamist attacks by asylum seekers that have plagued Germany for several years. One of the first attacks to shake the country was a knife attack in July 2016. The Afghan Riaz Khan Ahmadzai injured five people, four of them seriously, with an axe and a knife on a regional train near Würzburg.
A year earlier, he had come to Germany via Hungary without any documents. Hungary should have been responsible for the man’s asylum application. But apparently no one stopped him from continuing his journey. He was waved through like many others.
Finally, in December 2016, the rejected Tunisian asylum seeker Anis Amri drove a semi-trailer into the Christmas market at Berlin’s Breitscheidplatz. 13 people died and 67 were seriously injured. Amri fled to Italy on the night of the attack and was subsequently killed in a shootout with Italian police officers.
It later emerged that he had used a total of 14 false identities in Germany and had previously lived in Italy. His deportation failed several times. But he should not have been in Germany in the first place; according to the Dublin system, Italy was responsible.
The last high-profile Islamist attack occurred in Mannheim in May. Afghan Sulaiman Ataee stabbed police officer Rouven Laur and seriously injured Islam critic Michael Stürzenberger.
In 2013, while still a minor, he applied for asylum in Germany, but his application was rejected. Nevertheless, he stayed in Germany. First, the German parliament decided to stop deportations to Afghanistan, then Ataee was granted a temporary residence permit. The man had previously fathered a child with a German woman who has German citizenship and for whom he had custody.
Olaf Scholz has been announcing more deportations for months
In response to the attack in Mannheim, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) has now declared that he wants to deport rejected asylum seekers to Syria and Afghanistan. “Everyone in our country must be able to live without fear of their fellow human beings,” he said in his government statement at the time. We are enforcing this “central promise of our constitutional state with all our might.” On Monday, two days after the attack in Solingen, the Chancellor reiterated his promise: “We will have to do everything we can to ensure that those who cannot and are not allowed to stay here in Germany are also returned and deported.”
However, the majority of rejected asylum seekers are likely to remain in the country. Of the approximately 242,000 people in Germany who will be required to leave the country in 2024, around 119,000 have been granted a toleration permit, for example in the form of subsidiary protection. And Germany still has no diplomatic relations with Syria and Afghanistan, which would have to accept the deported asylum seekers. It is therefore unclear whether the situation will change substantially.