Deadly stabbing in German park fires up migration debate ahead of election

By Rachel More

BERLIN (Reuters) - The arrest of an Afghan asylum seeker suspected of killing two people in a knife attack targeting children in a German park has prompted calls for a much tougher migration stance and fired up campaigning for Germany's Feb. 23 national election.

The suspect, a 28-year-old Afghan national with a history of violent behaviour who had been undergoing psychiatric treatment, was due to appear before a judge on Thursday afternoon. The judge will decide on his pre-trial detention.

The suspect had had his asylum process closed and said he would voluntarily leave Germany in December, but had not left and remained under treatment, Bavaria's interior minister said.

A two-year-old boy of Moroccan descent and a 41-year-old man who tried to intervene in the attack, which occurred in a park in the Bavarian city of Aschaffenburg on Wednesday, died of their injuries. Three other people were injured.

"My wish list would be that we have a proper deportation policy, that people who are obliged to leave the country also leave this country," said Katrin Burger, organiser of a protest rally held on Wednesday evening in Aschaffenburg.

The stabbings add to a string of violent attacks in Germany that have boosted concerns over security and migration and fuelled support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which opinion polls put in second place behind the mainstream conservatives.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose Social Democrats (SPD) are trailing, convened an emergency meeting with his Interior Minister Nancy Faeser and security authorities late on Wednesday, branding the attack an "unbelievable act of terror".

"I am sick and tired of seeing such acts of violence occurring here every few weeks. By perpetrators who have actually come to us to find protection here," Scholz said in a statement.

"A false sense of tolerance is completely inappropriate. The authorities must work flat out to find out why the attacker was still in Germany in the first place. Consequences must follow immediately from the findings - it is not enough to talk."

'POLITICAL ANSWERS'

Friedrich Merz, the election frontrunner and leader of the Christian Democrat (CDU) conservatives, said: "This moves us, this pains us, this calls for clear political answers."

However, some Germans blame the CDU, and in particular Merz's predecessor and longtime chancellor Angela Merkel, for encouraging the large-scale influx of asylum seekers and migrants, mostly from the Middle East and Afghanistan, in 2015.

AfD leader Tino Chrupalla, whose party has won the backing of tech billionaire Elon Musk and who was the only German party leader to attend U.S. President Donald Trump's inauguration on Monday, demanded a change in asylum policy.

"Dangerous asylum seekers must be deported. We want to maintain diplomatic contacts with Afghanistan for this purpose. Dangerous parks must be cleared of criminals and made accessible to children and families again," Chrupalla said on X.

The liberal Free Democrats also demanded closer contacts with the Afghan Taliban, following Austria's lead, to facilitate removing failed asylum seekers.

Investigators into Wednesday's attack are focusing strongly on the suspect's psychological illness, Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann said, adding that an initial search of his accommodation in an asylum shelter had turned up no evidence of radical Islamist sympathies.

(Writing by Rachel More and Matthias Williams; Editing by Gareth Jones)