German police to step up security after shootings
GERMAN AUTHORITIES will step up police presence throughout the country after racially motivated shootings that killed nine people.
A 43-year-old German man, identified as Tobias Rathjen, fatally shot people from immigrant backgrounds in the Frankfurt suburb of Hanau before killing his mother and himself.
The man left a number of rambling texts and videos espousing racist views and claiming to have been under surveillance since birth.
Officials confirmed they had received a letter from the suspect last November in which he sought help from authorities in stopping the surveillance he believed he was under.
One key question in the investigation is whether authorities or others were aware the suspect posed a threat.
Interior minister Horst Seehofer said there would be more surveillance at “sensitive sites”, including mosques, and a high police presence at railway stations, airports and borders.
“The threat posed by far-right extremism, anti-Semitism and racism is very high in Germany,” Mr Seehofer told reporters in Berlin. Thousands of people gathered in cities across Germany on Thursday evening to hold vigils for the shooting victims but also to express anger that authorities have not done enough to prevent attacks despite a string of incidents in recent years.
Some also called for a crackdown on the extremist and antimigrant ideology that has crept into mainstream political debate with the rise of the Alternative for Germany party (AfD).
A top official in the centre-left Social Democratic Party, a junior partner in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s governing coalition, accused AfD of providing ideological fodder to people such as the Hanau gunman.
“One person carried out the shooting in Hanau, that’s what it looks like, but there were many that supplied him with ammunition, and AfD definitely belongs to them,” Lars Klingbeil told German public broadcaster ARD.