An Afghan asylum seeker suspected of ramming a car into a crowd in Munich and injuring dozens of people has been named by German media as Farhad N. At least 28 people were injured after a car veered into a crowd of people at a union demonstration in the German city of Munich today, police said. The suspected attacker was identified in reports - that did not give his full name due to German privacy laws - as having arrived in Germany in 2016.
His asylum application was rejected in 2017, and a final appeal was denied in 2019. However, he was permitted to stay in Germany under the country's "tolerance" protection rule, which prevents the immediate deportation of asylum seekers to nations where their lives may be at risk. Counter-terrorism police have now assumed control of the investigation after authorities found indications that the suspect may have an "extremist background.".
The attack follows a series of attacks involving immigrants in recent months that have pushed migration to the forefront of the campaigning for Germany's February 23 national election. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, along with other politicians, has strongly condemned the incident. "This perpetrator cannot hope for any leniency. He must be punished and he must leave the country," Scholz told reporters.
Participants in a demonstration by the service workers' union ver.di were walking along a street at about 10.30am when the car overtook a police vehicle following the gathering, accelerated and ploughed into the back of the group, police said. Officers arrested the suspect after firing a shot at the car, deputy police chief Christian Huber said. He added that at least 30 people were believed to be injured, some of them seriously.
A damaged Mini could be seen at the scene, along with debris including shoes. Bavaria's state interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, said he was known to authorities in connection with theft and drug offences, but did not give further details."It is simply terrible," Bavarian governor Markus Soder told reporters at the scene. "We feel with the victims, we are praying for the victims - we hope very much that they all make it.
"It is suspected to be an attack - a lot points to that," Mr Soder added. Mayor Dieter Reiter said he was "deeply shocked" by the incident. He said that children were among those injured. The Munich incident comes three weeks after a two-year-old boy and a man were killed in a knife attack in Aschaffenburg, also in Bavaria. An Afghan whose asylum application was rejected was the suspect in that attack, which propelled migration to the centre of the German election campaign.
The Aschaffenburg attack followed knife attacks in Mannheim and in Solingen last year in which the suspects were immigrants from Afghanistan and Syria, respectively - in the latter case, also a rejected asylum-seeker who was supposed to have left the country. In the December Christmas market car ramming in Magdeburg, the suspect was a Saudi doctor who previously had come to various regional authorities' attention.
Germany's main opposition conservative bloc, in which Mr Soder is a prominent figure, has demanded a tougher approach to irregular migration, calling for many more people to be turned back at the country's borders and for an increase in deportations. Curbing migration is also a core issue for the far-right Alternative for Germany, which polls put in second place behind the conservatives. "This is more evidence that we can't go from attack to attack and show dismay, thank police for their deployment," Mr Soder said.
"We actually have to change something. This is not the first such act; so, we feel with the people today, but at the same time we are determined that something much change in Germany, and quickly.". Centre-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government said it already has done a lot to reduce irregular migration, and that the opposition's plans are incompatible with German and European Union law. The Bavarian capital will see heavy security in the coming days because the three-day Munich Security Conference, an annual gathering of international foreign and security policy officials, opens on Friday.
