“They financed his radicalization,” says Wagenknecht about the Mannheim attacker

BSW chairwoman Sahra Wagenknecht considers it a scandal that the Mannheim attacker, who came from Afghanistan, was able to live in Germany for a decade after his asylum application was rejected in 2014. Wagenknecht said in the new episode of the WELT TV format “Politicians’ Grill with Jan Philipp Burgard”: “I find it scandalous that someone who has no protection status, no right to asylum, stays in our country for over ten years.”

Referring to social benefits, Wagenknecht continued: “We basically financed his radicalization as well. He lived off us, off the money of the citizens.”

At the beginning of June, a 25-year-old Afghan-born man stabbed several people at an event organized by the anti-Islam movement Pax Europa in Mannheim, including a police officer who had rushed to the scene. Rouven L. died a few days after the attack. Sulaiman A. came to Germany in 2013. His asylum application was rejected in 2014, but he was not deported. Nine years later, the authorities granted him a temporary residence permit under Section 28 of the Residence Act.

Someone who is not entitled to asylum should “no longer have a residence status in our country and no longer have a right to social benefits,” said Wagenknecht. And he continued: “At the moment, everyone who can even halfway pronounce the word asylum comes to Germany, and almost all of them stay here.”

The founder of the alliance, Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), also has no understanding of why the man has not been deported to Afghanistan long ago: “Nobody can explain to me why he could not have been deported to Afghanistan.” As an Islamist, he would certainly not have been persecuted by the Taliban.

The Mannheim attacker is not an isolated case. “Young girls have already been stabbed to death on a regional express train,” there are “repeated deaths” and “an increasing number of rapes.” After such acts, politicians’ statements repeatedly speak of “zero tolerance” and criminal law. Wagenknecht: “And after that, everything will carry on as before.”

WELT TV editor-in-chief Jan Philipp Burgard has Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) as a guest on the second edition of “Politikergrillen”, a new format on WELT TV. The program will be broadcast on WELT TV on Thursday, June 6, 2024, at 8:15 p.m. and can be seen on WELTplus in the morning. Other guests in the coming weeks include CDU leader Friedrich Merz and Federal Minister of Agriculture Cem Özdemir (The Greens). Can be seen on WELT TV, in the livestream on WELT.de and afterwards in the media library.