JMinister of Justice Marco Buschmann (FDP) sees the case of the suspected knife attacker from Brokstedt as evidence that the flow of information between prosecutors and immigration authorities needs to be improved. A procedure had been initiated before the crime to expel Ibrahim A. from the country, Buschmann told the newspapers of the Funke media group on Tuesday. However, the legally required hearing of the man apparently failed because the competent authority had not reached him – even when he was already in custody for another crime and was therefore under the control of the law enforcement authorities.
“It can’t be,” criticized Buschmann. “Pre-trial detention should not be an advantage, particularly for someone who boasts about how dangerous he is. That’s absurd.” His ministry made a proposal to the justice departments of the federal states as to how law enforcement and immigration authorities could work more closely together, also to prevent cases similar to the one in Brokstedt.
Two killed in attack
In the future, immigration authorities should not only be informed about the issuance and cancellation of an arrest warrant, but also about the actual detention or release of the person concerned. “In particular, the address of the detention center and the release address would also have to be given,” explained Buschmann. “Hearings and any subsequent deportations must not fail because the immigration authorities are not informed about these circumstances.”
Ibrahim A. is said to have stabbed other passengers with a knife on a regional train from Kiel to Hamburg on January 25. Two young people died and five others were injured, some seriously. Almost a week earlier, the 33-year-old had been released from custody in Hamburg. The authorities in both federal states – Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein – blame each other for dealing with the alleged perpetrator.
In view of the alleged knife attacker’s previous statements about terrorism, the German Police Union (DPolG) is calling for deportation prisons for dangerous asylum seekers. The suspect Ibrahim A. should not have been at large, union boss Rainer Wendt told the “Bild” newspaper. “We need consistent deportation custody for dangerous refugees until the day of their deportation – even if that takes years.”
According to Wendt, the deportation prisons he demands could also be rented abroad if migrants classified as dangerous were not taken back from their home countries. In addition, the union leader called for “an electronic community file of all authorities involved that can be viewed nationwide for those who entered the country illegally”. Police officers and civil servants must “know at all times who is standing in front of them and who is responsible”.
The head of the CSU state group, Alexander Dobrindt, also believes that deportation prisons make sense. “Someone who poses such a danger, who has made it so unmistakably clear that he has extremist, terror-ready ideas, must not be released again,” he told the “Bild” newspaper.
It became known on Monday that Ibrahim A. had compared himself to the terrorist Anis Amri on a train six months before the knife attack. According to the Hamburg judicial authority, his prisoner’s personal file documents that he said in prison in August 2022: “There is not just one Anis Amri, there are several, I am one too.” Amri was in December 2016 with a stolen truck drove to a Christmas market in Berlin. Twelve people were killed and dozens more injured.
