Germany: Nearly 9000 Migrant Children Missing

Close to 9,000 migrant children are missing in Germany, and police fear that many of them will be exploited by organised criminal gangs.

The number of migrant children who have gone missing in Germany has doubled since the start of the year according to a new report from the German federal police (BKA), reports Spiegel Online.

A total of 8,991 underage migrants have disappeared from asylum homes or residences where they were being looked after by social workers. Police also say that a number of the cases of missing children can be tied to organised criminal gangs, some of which may force the children into prostitution or drug running.

Police say that most of the missing migrant children are between the ages of 14 to 17 years old, though alarmingly 867 are below the age of 13. While the BKA has stated that they do not suspect that most cases of missing children involve organised crime, senior figures earlier this year have painted a much different picture.

Chairman of the Central Council of German Muslims, Aiman Mazyek, claimed that many of the migrant children who had gone missing were not only being forced into prostitution but were having their organs harvested by criminal gangs.

In July Breitbart London reported on an alarming case where the cell phone of a people trafficker showed not only that migrant children were having their organs harvested but migrants were even being eaten by cannibals.

The phone of Eritrean trafficking kingpin Medhanie Yehdego Mered showed horrific images of migrants killed and dismembered for their organs when they were unable to pay the hefty fees of the traffickers. Mered was captured in Sudan and awaits trial in an Italian court for trafficking people from Libya to Italy.

Germany has also seen a massive increase in the number of unaccompanied minors entering the country in recent months. Afghan families are sending their children to travel alone to Europe as they perceive gaining asylum status as “heroic”.

The influx of underage migrants has led to several problems for Germany and other European countries including a rise in the number of child marriages; German courts are actively debating on how to deal with them.

According to the BKA most of the children now arriving in Germany are from Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Eritrea, Morocco, and Algeria. The German government is also coming to terms with the fact that even if the asylum claims fail for child migrants, many of them will never leave the country because they are underage.