Suspect in Samurai Sword Murder That Shocked Germany Was Fake ‘Refugee’

A “Syrian” migrant who was arrested last month after allegedly stabbed a man to death with a samurai sword in the middle of a busy street in front of dozens of witnesses was using a false identity to claim asylum.

The alleged murderer, identified as 28-year-old Issa M., claimed to be Syrian when he came from Turkey to Germany in 2015 but according to his brother, he was not born in Syria but in Jordan, Austrian tabloid Kronen Zeitung reports.

The murder, which took place last week in Stuttgart, was caught on film and during the incident, Issa M. can be heard asking, “what did you send to Berlin?”, fuelling speculation that the motive behind the killing had to do with his false identity being found out by the victim Wilhelm L.

A friend of both men has added to the speculation saying that the 36-year-old German Kazakh had reported Issa M., his former roommate, to the authorities for asylum fraud.

The brother of the alleged killer said that Issa M. bought a fake passport in Turkey that claimed he had been born in the Syrian city of Dara but the truth was that he had been born 20 miles away across the Jordanian border.

Fake Syrian passports have been a problem for German authorities since the height of the migrant crisis in 2015 with a report in November of that year claiming that the country had been inundated with fakes.

In 2016, German authorities admitted that they had let in migrants with fake passports even when they were aware the documents were fraudulent.

According to the brother, Issa M. had led a relatively normal life after being given refugee status in Germany and had married a woman who may have already been married herself and had cheated on him.

Issa M. allegedly beat the woman and afterwards moved to Stuttgart where he met Wilhelm. L. and shared an apartment together. Issa M. eventually left the flat after telling his brother the German-Kazakh had made his life hell.

The case is just the latest murder allegedly committed by a migrant in Germany this year and follows the shocking murder of an eight-year-old child who was pushed in front of a train only days before.