The News
German police arrested a Syrian man suspected of killing three people on Friday in an attack authorities said was an act of terrorism claimed by the Islamic State.
Leaders of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party seized on the alleged attacker’s nationality to hit back at the country’s immigration and asylum policies, with one AfD official calling for the end of “forced multiculturalization.”
SIGNALS
The stabbing could fuel AfD electoral victory
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s center-left party has so far resisted the conservative opposition’s calls to immediately ban admission of refugees from Syria and Afghanistan, DW reported. But the stabbing could provide ammunition to the far-right AfD ahead of the Sep 1. vote in the eastern state of Thuringia, where AfD leader Björn Höcke — who once said it was problematic to represent Adolf Hitler as “absolute evil” — sits atop the polls. The AfD was “emboldened” after the party’s recent protests over the killing of a police officer saw their adversaries echo the group’s hardline stance on immigration, The New York Times wrote in July, showing how the sentiment has increasingly moved to the center of German political discourse.
Experts say knife crime statistics aren’t necessarily reliable
The federal government has been accused of “talking a lot but doing very little” amid coalition deadlock over a bill that would ban the carrying of knives longer than six centimeters, Le Monde noted. But experts have disputed official statistics that appear to show a 9.7% year-on-year rise in cases of serious bodily harm involving a knife: The figures “include both knife attacks that were carried out and threats with knives, so it’s a very vague category,” a criminologist told DW. “And it’s only been a short while, so the numbers aren’t really reliable.” He also questioned the link between violent crime and immigration, arguing that the non-Germans disproportionately represented in statistics ultimately come from a diverse range of backgrounds.