Man’s asylum bid was rejected, he recorded a video pledging allegiance to extremistsANSBACH A Syrian asylum seeker who blew himself up outside a German music festival had made a video pledging allegiance to Daesh, authorities said Monday, in a week of attacks that has shaken the country.
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Authorities have confirmed that a bomber killed himself and injured 12 other people in an explosion outside of an Ansbach, Germany music festival on Sunday.
The attack on Sunday, outside a music festival in Ansbach, a town of 40,000 people southwest of Nuremberg that has a US Army base, was the fourth act of violence by men of Middle Eastern or Asian origin against German civilians in a week. Investigators said on Monday that in videos found on his mobile phone the man had pledged allegiance to Islamic State (Isis).
“It all appeared to be going pretty well for Merkel but the situation has changed dramatically in the 10 days between the Nice attack and Sunday’s suicide bomber in Ansbach”, the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung wrote, referring to attacks in France and Germany claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group. “Given the current evidence, there is no indication that this was a terrorist attack”, a police spokesman stated. “We will find what exactly was behind this”, Ms Merkel said on Saturday. The attacker, a 27-year-old Syrian denied asylum in Germany, might also have mental disorder.
“We must not place refugees under general suspicion despite individual cases that are under investigation”, he said in an interview with the Funke media group after a string of assaults in southern Germany, some involving asylum-seekers.
18 July: An axe-wielding teenage asylum seeker from Afghanistan is shot dead after injuring five people in an attack on a train.
ISIS said he was a “soldier of Islamic State” and describe the attack as a “martyrdom operation”.
However, the Bavarian interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, disagrees with police, saying his “personal view was that the attack was likely the work of an “Islamist” suicide bomber”. Police said the 18-year-old German-Iranian, who also killed himself, was “obsessed with mass killers like Norwegian right-wing militant Anders Behring Breivik”.
Thomas Strobl, the interior minister of Baden-Wuerttemberg – where a woman was killed by a Syrian attacker on Sunday – also demanded a tougher stance toward asylum-seekers.
Security staff at the concert noticed a suspicious person wearing a backpack pacing up and down around the entrance to the event, a police statement said.
After Sunday night’s ISIS-related suicide bombing in Ansbach, Germany, a number of politicians are insisting that the deportation of rejected asylum-seekers must be expedited to ensure that potentially risky individuals leave the country as soon as possible.
He was facing imminent deportation to Bulgaria, where he was first registered within the European Union as an asylum seeker.
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In January a programme was launched in the city to help refugees assimilate by teaching them the basics of law in their new host country. Daleel sought asylum in Germany two years ago.
