Asylum Seeker’s Rape/Murder Roils Germany

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s policy of admitting into Germany hundreds of thousands of purported “refugees”–out of a misplaced sense of guilt, apparently–has been a disaster. The policy is appropriately unpopular, even more so following the latest outrage, the rape and murder of a 14 year old girl by an Iraqi whose plea for refugee status was turned down.

The New York Times reports, with surprising objectivity:

It was a gruesome murder: A 14-year-old girl was raped and strangled, her body buried under brushwood in a secluded area near the railway tracks near her hometown in western Germany.

But the fact that the chief suspect is an Iraqi asylum seeker has turned a terrible crime into political dynamite.

Most striking is the parallel between German and American immigration policies.

The murder suspect, identified as Ali Bashar, a 20-year-old Iraqi, arrived in Germany in October 2015, shortly after Ms. Merkel opened the borders to hundreds of thousands of migrants. He was rejected in late 2016, but was allowed to stay in the country while his appeal was pending.

“If he had been deported, she would still be alive,” read a headline in the country’s largest tabloid, Bild, which devoted two pages to the case.

He came to the attention of the police several times, involving allegations of jostling a police officer, robbing a passer-by and carrying a knife.

Here in the U.S., we have seen countless similar stories. Like Germany, we seem to lack the will to get rid of those who have no business being in our country, even when they commit multiple crimes.

Another parallel: the Germans have little control over their borders, as indicated by the fact that the murderer was able to flee the country, along with seven family members who apparently were untroubled by the fact that Bashar is a rapist and a murderer.

Last Saturday, he and seven other members of his family managed to flee the country, boarding a plane in Düsseldorf with papers apparently issued by the Iraqi Consulate but featuring false names, after paying cash for a one-way fare to Istanbul and then on to Iraq, where he has since been arrested.

While there are plenty of precedents for Bashar’s crimes, this one seems to have struck a chord with many Germans:

Critics of Ms. Merkel, led by the nativist Alternative for Germany party, now the largest opposition party, have been calling for a parliamentary inquiry into her migration policy. The proposal is gaining traction with other parties, too, and could threaten Ms. Merkel’s uneasy coalition with the Social Democrats.

On Thursday night, after reports of the killing, Alice Weidel, the deputy leader of the AfD, accused Ms. Merkel of sharing responsibility in the death of the girl, who has been identified by the authorities as Susanna Feldmann, and called for her entire cabinet to step down.

“Make way for an asylum policy that is built around law and order, so fathers and mothers in our country no longer need to be afraid for their children,” Ms. Weidel said in a video posted on Twitter.

“What do you say to the parents of the murdered #Susanna, Frau Merkel?” she tweeted later.

But there was plenty of outrage among centrist politicians, too. “Why was the perpetrator able to leave the country apparently under a false name?” asked Christian Lindner, the leader of the liberal Free Democrats, who has also expressed support for a parliamentary inquiry.

The Times saves a final gruesome detail for the conclusion of its story. The murderer Ali Bashar, who has now been apprehended in Iraq and reportedly has confessed, commandeered his victim’s cell phone to text the 14-year-old’s mother:

Susanna’s mother has been chronicling her daily anguish on Facebook since her daughter went missing on May 22.

The entry on June 1, a week after her daughter had disappeared, directly addressed Ms. Merkel.

“I turn to you with this cry for help because I feel abandoned by the German state as well as by our friend and helper (Police!!!),” the mother wrote.

The last text message she received from her daughter’s cellphone on May 23 was written in bad German. “Don’t look for me,” it said. “I come in 2 or 3 weeks.”

At that point Susanna was already dead.

Is the tide turning on illegal immigrant violence? That may be too much to hope for, but surprisingly, even the New York Times seems to have more sympathy for Susanna Feldmann and her family than for Susanna’s Islamic rapist/murderer. That is a welcome change.

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