Merkel defends migrant policy and claims jihadist terror had already reached Europe
ANGELA MERKEL has defended her “open-door” refugee policy against accusations it has brought jihadist terrorism to Germany.
Just weeks before the anniversary of her decision to open the country’s borders to asylum seekers, Mrs Merkel rejected claims that the influx was to blame for two terrorist attacks by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) last month.
“The phenomenon of Islamic terrorism, of Isil, is not a phenomenon that came to us with the refugees, but rather one that we already had before,” Mrs Merkel said at a rally preceding regional elections next month.
Mrs Merkel has seen her personal approval ratings plunge since the first Isil attacks on German soil were carried out by asylum seek- ers in Bavaria last month. A teenage refugee from Afghanistan injured five people during an axe attack on a train before being shot dead by police.
In another attack, an asylum seeker from Syria who faced deportation to Bulgaria killed himself and injured 15 people in a suicide bombing outside a music festival.
The two attacks have left the public mood badly shaken, and elections in the northern state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania will be seen as a crucial test of Mrs Merkel’s support.
The far-Right Alternative for Germany party (AfD) hopes to make inroads against Mrs Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) in the state with an anti-migrant and anti-Muslim platform.
“I can understand that security has very, very high significance for people at the moment, that’s completely clear,” the chancellor said.
“We’re doing everything humanly possible to ensure security, and wherever gaps arise we must readjust.”
Mrs Merkel conceded that Isil was trying to use the migrant crisis to recruit followers and introduce terror cells into Europe. “It can be seen that there are attempts to win over refugees, or as we saw in the Paris attacks, where asylum-seekers were deliberately smuggled in by Isil,” she said.
However, she emphasised that her government was also concerned about the number of people travelling from Germany to the Middle East in order to volunteer as Isil fighters. “This group has worried us for many years,” she said.
The AfD inflicted damaging losses on the Christian Democrats and their allies in state elections earlier this year, and has since adopted an openly anti-Muslim agenda, arguing that Islam “does not belong in Germany”.
Mrs Merkel rejected that assertion, telling her rally: “We have said clearly that an Islam that works and lives on the basis of the constitution belongs in Germany.”
The face veil is not compatible with German society but could prove difficult to ban at a national level, interior minister Thomas de Maiziere said yesterday. Several high-profile members of Mrs Merkel’s conservative bloc have called for a ban on the burqa and niqab.
‘I can understand security has very high significance for people at present’