Germany’s Interior Minister has told Germans to expect more Islamic terror attacks in the country, after a 17-year-old unaccompanied Afghan migrant injured 18 people. Thomas de Maiziere insisted there is no link between “refugees” and terrorist attacks.
On Monday in Bavaria a migrant who arrived in Germany in 2015 went on a rampage with an axe, wounding 18 people. Two of the Afghan’s victims are still in a critical condition in hospital. Germany’s Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere described Monday night’s axe attack in Wuerzburg as “perhaps half-way between running amok and terror”.
Last year saw over a million migrants, the majority of them Muslim, flood into Germany. Since last September the country has seen four Islamic terror attacks committed on its soil. In the last two decades, terrorist attacks were almost unknown in Germany.
The interior minister said that the 17-year-old was “goaded” by Islamic State into launching the bloody attack, and warned Germans that the nation should expect more Islamic terror attacks on their soil.
“In Germany we must also expect attacks by small groups of radicalised ‘lone-wolf’ attackers,” he said. Mr. de Maiziere also suggested that the death of a friend in Afghanistan triggered the unaccompanied migrant into launching the brutal attack.
European Union (EU) police agency, Europol, warned that lone wolf attacks are a “favourite tactic” of Islamic State, and said countries in the bloc could expect such terror attacks in the service of Islamist ideology.
Europol’s analysis stated that both al Qaeda and Islamic State have repeatedly called on Muslims living in Western countries to commit attacks in their country of residence.
The Interior Minister said Germany is on high alert for terrorist attacks but dismissed any connection between this and the fact more than a million migrants entered the country last year.
The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) politician said that while there have been rumours that some of the migrants who entered Europe during the “migrant crisis” could be planning terrorist attacks, “in most cases these were shown to be false”.
Mr. de Maiziere said that, because of this, “we cannot say there is a connection between refugees and terrorism”.
Germany’s response to the terror threat posed by migrants echoed words spoken by French President Manuel Valls on Friday. Delivering a speech in the wake of the Islamic terror attack in Nice that left 84 dead, the French president said: “Times have changed, and France is going to have to live with terrorism.”
Other countries have responded differently to Islamist terrorists being among the migrants seeking asylum within their borders.
In May, it emerged that several large terror attacks that struck Africa were planned in Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camp. Noting that Somali migrants posed a terror threat to the country the Kenyan president announced that the nation would close its camp of 600,000 people.
The nation’s deputy president, William Ruto, said that the UK and U.S. should resettle the Somalis residing in the camp.
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