The number of migrants reporting themselves to German police claiming to be members of terrorist groups in order to avoid deportation is on the rise.
Public prosecutors’ offices in Stuttgart and Karlsruhe are claiming that the number has surged, saying they had seen 300 cases of migrants claiming to be members of terror groups for the entire year in 2017, compared to 159 cases in just the first three months of this year, Die Welt reports.
“These proceedings are a huge burden for the judiciary,” said Baden-Württemberg Minister of Justice Guido Wolf.
“I have no understanding when someone admits to a serious crime just because he hopes for benefits in the asylum process,” Wolf added.
Self-reporting now accounts for around half of the suspected terrorist cases in Germany, according to several German media sources.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice said that many of the cases were particularly time-consuming because most of the alleged terrorist activity had occurred overseas in countries like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia.
The trend in the Baden-Württemberg matches that of Saxony where regional Minister of Justice Sebastian Gemkow claimed to have seen at least 36 cases of migrants claiming to be members of groups like the Islamic State or al-Nusra last September.
Asylum seekers, according to the U.S.-based Heritage Foundation think-tank, make up around half of all the suspects in actual terrorist plots.
The most infamous terror attack, the Berlin Christmas market attack in December of 2016, was committed by failed asylum seeker Anis Amri, which led many to further criticise the mass migration policies of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Last year, Breitbart London reported that asylum seekers were also admitting to other crimes, including murder, to avoid deportation.
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