Thomas De Maiziere

Germany Releases Suspect in Berlin Market Attack, Perpetrator May Still Be on the Run

Although ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack, authorities are following various leads.

People gather to lay down flowers outside the Gedaechniskirche near the area where a truck which ploughed into a crowded Christmas market in the German capital last night in Berlin. Credit:Reuters/Pawel Kopczynski

Berlin: German authorities on Tuesday released a Pakistani asylum-seeker suspected of driving a truck into a Berlin Christmas market and killing 12 people due to a lack of evidence and the interior minister said the real perpetrator may still be on the run.

The truck smashed into wooden huts serving mulled wine and sausages on Monday evening at the foot of the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church, one of west Berlin’s most famous landmarks. Forty-five people were injured, 30 severely.

ISIS claimed responsibility the attack, saying the perpetrator was a “soldier” of the militant group.

“He executed the operation in response to calls to target nationals of the coalition countries,” its AMAQ news agency said.

But Germany‘s interior minister said that despite the claim, investigators were following various leads.

“We just heard about the supposed claim of responsibility by this so-called ISIS that is in fact a gang of terrorists,” Minister Thomas de Maiziere told ARD broadcaster. “There are several leads that investigators are following now.”

The Chief Federal Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement it had been unable to prove that the suspect had been in the cabin of the truck at the time of the attack and said he had denied any involvement.

Earlier, Die Welt newspaper quoted an unnamed police chief as saying: “We have the wrong man. And therefore a new situation. The true perpetrator is still armed, at large and can cause fresh damage.”

Commenting on the suspect‘s release, de Maiziere told ZDF television: “That’s why it is true that one cannot rule out that the perpetrator is still at large.”

He said there was no doubt the Berlin incident had been an attack but the motive remained unclear. He also said it was not yet known how many foreigners were among the victims of the attack but no children had been among the dead.

News of the arrest of the 23-year-old Pakistani had led politicians in Germany and beyond to demand a crackdown on immigration, but Chancellor Angela Merkel urged caution.

“There is much we still do not know with sufficient certainty but we must, as things stand now, assume it was a terrorist attack,” she told reporters earlier on Tuesday.

“I know it would be especially hard for us all to bear if it were confirmed that the person who committed this act was someone who sought protection and asylum,” she said.

Polish connection

The truck belonged to a Polish freight company and its rightful driver was found shot dead in the vehicle. The Polish truck driver had arrived hours earlier in the German capital and spoken to his wife about 3 p.m., according to his cousin.

When she called again an hour later, there was no answer.

“At 3.45 p.m. you can see the movement on the GPS (Global Positioning System). The car moved forward and back. As if someone was learning to drive it,” said the cousin, Ariel Zurawski, who was also the boss of the trucking company.

“I knew something was wrong.”

Merkel joined hundreds of mourners on Tuesday evening at a memorial service at the church near the attack site. Her spokesman said she had spoken with the leaders of seven European countries and also with US President Barack Obama, who all assured her of their support for Germany.

Security officials in Germany and Europe have warned for years that Christmas markets could present an easy target for militant attacks. In 2000, an al-Qaeda plan to bomb the Strasbourg Christmas market on New Year’s Eve was foiled.

There were no concrete barricades at the Berlin Christmas market, as have been installed at a similar venue in Britain.

The attack fuelled immediate demands for a change to Merkel’s immigration policies, under which more than a million people fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere have arrived in Germany this year and last.

“We must say that we are in a state of war, although some people, who always only want to see good, do not want to see this,” said Klaus Bouillon, interior minister of the state of Saarland and a member of Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU).

Horst Seehofer, leader of the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, said: “We owe it to the victims, to those affected and to the whole population to rethink our immigration and security policy and to change it.”

Policemen investigate the scene where a truck ploughed into a crowded Christmas market in the German capital last night in Berlin, Germany, December 20, 2016 Credit:Reuters/Fabrizio Bensch

“Fear of evil”

The record influx has hit Merkel’s ratings as she prepares to run for a fourth term next year and has boosted support for the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD).

AfD leader Frauke Petry said Germany was no longer safe and “radical Islamic terrorism has struck in the heart of Germany“.

The incident evoked memories of an attack in Nice, France in July when a Tunisian-born man drove a 19-tonne truck along the beach front, mowing down people who had gathered to watch the fireworks on Bastille Day, killing 86 people. That was claimed by ISIS.

The influx of migrants to the EU has deeply divided its 28 members and fuelled the rise of populist anti-immigration movements that hope to capitalise on public concerns next year in elections in France, Germany and the Netherlands.

On Tuesday morning, investigators removed the black truck from the site for forensic examination. People left flowers at the scene and notes, one of which read: “Keep on living, Berliners!” One woman was crying as she stopped by the flowers.

Merkel said Germans must not be cowed by the attack: “We do not want to live paralysed by the fear of evil.”

“Even if it is difficult in these hours, we will find the strength for the life we want to live in Germany– free, together and open.”

Other European countries said they were reviewing security.

Austrian Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka called for biometric and fingerprint checks to be introduced along the Balkan route used by many migrants arriving in Europe in order to better control foreign jihadist fighters’ movements.

London police said they were reviewing their plans for protecting public events over the festive period.

(Reuters)

Truck Kills 12 in Berlin Christmas Market, Government Suspects Attack

The nationality of the suspected driver, who fled the crash scene and was later arrested, was unclear, police said.

Parts of a Christmas market decoration stick in the windscreen of a truck following an accident with the truck on Breitscheidplatz square near the fashionable Kurfuerstendamm avenue in the west of Berlin, Germany, December 19, 2016. Credit: Reuters

Berlin: A truck ploughed into a crowded Christmas market in central Berlin on Monday evening, killing 12 people and injuring 48 others in what Germany’s interior minister said looked like an attack.

Police said on Twitter that they had taken one suspect into custody and that another passenger from the truck had died as it crashed into people gathered around wooden huts serving mulled wine and sausages at the foot of the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church in the heart of former West Berlin.

The nationality of the suspected driver, who fled the crash scene and was later arrested, was unclear, police said.

German media cited local security sources as saying that there was evidence suggesting the arrested suspect was from Afghanistan or Pakistan and entered Germany in February as a refugee.

“We heard a loud bang,” Emma Rushton, a tourist, told CNN. “We started to see the top of an articulated truck, a lorry … just crashing through the stalls, through people.”

Rushton said the truck seemed to be travelling at about 40 mph.

Police later said that 48 injured people were brought to Berlin hospitals.

Pictures from the scene showed Christmas decorations protruding from the smashed windscreen of the black truck. In the aftermath, it was resting lopsided on the pavement with a mangled Christmas tree beneath its wheels.

Berlin police said on Twitter they were investigating leads that the truck had been stolen from a construction site in Poland.

Interior minister Thomas de Maiziere said the circumstances of the crash were still unclear, adding: “I don’t want to use the word ‘attack’ yet although a lot points to that.”

US President-elect Donald Trump condemned what he called an attack, linking it to “Islamist terrorists” before German police officials had said who was responsible.

The White House on Monday condemned what it called “what appears to have been a terrorist attack”.

Germany has not in recent years suffered a large-scale attack from Islamist militants like those seen in neighbouring Belgium and France.

But it was shaken by two smaller attacks in Bavaria over the summer, one on a train near Wuerzburg and another at a music festival in Ansbach that wounded 20 people. Both were claimed by ISIS.

And government officials have said the country, which accepted nearly 900,000 migrants last year, many from the war-torn Middle East, lies in the “crosshairs of terrorism.”

In mid-October, police arrested a Syrian refugee suspected of planning a bomb attack on an airport in Berlin. The 22-year-old man committed suicide in prison shortly after his arrest.

People urged to stay away

A government spokesman said Chancellor Angela Merkel was briefed on the situation by de Maiziere and the Berlin mayor. Police said there were no indications of further dangerous situations in the area and urged people to stay away from the scene.

“I’m deeply shaken about the horrible news of what occurred at the memorial church in Berlin,” foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said.

The truck veered into the market around 8 pm, normally a crowded time when adults and children would be gathering in the traditional cluster of wooden huts that sell food and Christmas goods in an annual celebration replicated across Germany and much of central Europe.

Ariel Zurawski, whose Polish freight company owns the truck, said the driver of the truck did not work for him.

“It wasn’t my driver,” Zurawski told Polish private broadcaster TVN 24. “I vouch for him. He’s my cousin.”

The incident took place near a famous Berlin landmark – the Gedaechtniskirche or memorial church built in 1891-95, which was left a ruin with a jagged tower after it was damaged in World War Two bombing raids as a monument to peace and reconciliation.

Police cars and ambulances converged quickly on the scene.

(Reuters)

German Interior Ministry Wants Migrants to Be Intercepted and Returned to Africa

“The elimination of the prospect of reaching the European coast could convince migrants to avoid embarking on the life-threatening and costly journey in the first place,” a ministry spokeswoman said.

German interior minister Thomas de Maiziere. Credit: Wolfgang Rattay/Files/Reuters

Berlin: The German interior ministry wants to stop migrants from ever reaching Europe’s Mediterranean coast by picking them up at sea and returning them to Africa, the Welt am Sonntag newspaper reported on Sunday.

In what would be a huge shift for a country with one of the most generous asylum policies, the ministry says the EU should adopt an Australian-style system under which migrants intercepted at sea are sent for processing at camps in third countries.

“The elimination of the prospect of reaching the European coast could convince migrants to avoid embarking on the life-threatening and costly journey in the first place,” the paper quoted a ministry spokeswoman as saying.

“The goal must be to remove the basis for people-smuggling organisations and to save migrants from the life-threatening journey.”

The ministry‘s proposal calls for migrants picked up in the Mediterranean – most of whom set off from conflict-torn Libya – to be sent to Tunisia, Egypt or other north African states to apply for asylum from there.

If their asylum applications are accepted, the migrants could then be transported safely to Europe.

The ministry is headed by Thomas de Maiziere, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats. Merkel has been under fire for her open-door refugee policy, with her party losing votes to the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party in recent regional elections.

The ministry said there were no concrete plans or discussions at EU-level about the proposal, but opposition politicians condemned the plan.

Bernd Riexinger, head of the opposition Left party, said it would be “a humanitarian scandal and a further step toward elimination of the right to asylum,” the paper reported.

He said asylum applications should be filed in Germany to ensure applicants had access to legal help and he called Australia’s treatment of migrants “absolutely unacceptable”.

More than 2,200 migrants were rescued in the Mediterranean in a single day on Saturday and 10 bodies were recovered, Italy’s coast guard said.

The International Organisation for Migration said last week that 1,59,496 people had reach Italy by sea this year and 4,220 died trying – a sharp increase from 3,777 in the whole of 2015.

Germany Considers New Security Measures After Spate of Attacks

Considered reforms include increasing the police force by 10% over the next three to four years and equipping local police better.

German interior minister Thomas de Maiziere is seen during his visit at the federal police inspection in Bremen, Germany, August 10, 2016. Credit: Reuters/Fabian Bimmer

Berlin: Germany’s interior minister will on Thursday propose security measures aimed at allaying public concerns after two Islamist attacks and a shooting rampage by a mentally unstable teenager.

Thomas de Maiziere declined at a news conference on Wednesday to confirm media reports that the plans included speedier deportation of foreigners believed to pose a security threat.

Germany had until last month been spared the kind of Islamist attacks suffered by neighbouring France and Belgium.

But in late July, the jihadist militant group ISIS claimed two attacks – on a train near Wuerzburg and on a music festival in Ansbach – in which asylum-seekers wounded 20 people in total.

In addition, security forces had to respond to an attack in a shopping centre in the city of Munich in which nine people were killed by an 18-year-old German-Iranian who had been in psychiatric treatment and was obsessed with mass killings.

The incidents put the focus back on the government’s migration policy, which resulted in more than a million migrants entering Germany last year, most of them fleeing war and conflict in Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq, although the influx has since been stemmed.

De Maiziere said the federal government and Germany’s 16 states would discuss plans to equip local police forces better. In addition, the government wanted to raise the number of federal police by 10% over three to four years.

“We live in difficult times. The terror alert is high. The police are heavily burdened,” de Maiziere told reporters in Bremen, adding that further details would be announced at a news conference on Thursday.

Germans worried

The daily Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger newspaper cited coalition sources as saying de Maiziere wanted the package of new measures adopted before the next federal election, due in autumn 2017.

A spokesman for the interior ministry declined to comment on a report in the mass-selling Bild newspaper that the proposals would make it easier to deport foreigners who were deemed a threat to security or who had committed crimes.

The influx of mainly Muslim refugees and the Islamist attacks in France and Belgium this year and last have made security fears one of Germans’ biggest concerns.

The Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger said the new legislation would also facilitate the retention of personal data and accelerate the expulsion of migrants whose asylum applications have been rejected.

It said German doctors might also be permitted in certain cases to break confidentiality and inform authorities if their patients told them about any planned crimes, Bild reported.

The measures build on a nine-point plan announced by Chancellor Angela Merkel after the attacks, the paper said.

Separately, the centre-right interior ministers of Germany’s federal states have put forward a list of 27 demands to improve security.

They include hiring an additional 15,000 police by 2020 and greater video surveillance at transport hubs and public places, according to a copy of their draft document seen by Reuters.

The ministers also call for a ban on the full body veil for women and for a law to be revoked that allows for dual nationality for German citizens in some circumstances – measures that are likely to prove controversial.

The state ministers are due to meet de Maiziere on August 18. The spokesman for the federal interior ministry said the document, the ‘Berlin declaration’, was still under consultation.

(Reuters)

How Germany’s Troubled History Adds a Twist to Angela Merkel’s Migration Woes

In her annual statement to the press, the German Chancellor insisted recent events would not change her stance on welcoming refugees.

Angela Merkel in 2008. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The motives behind the four attacks that have taken place in Germany recently are still under investigation. Links to ISIS are suspected in two cases, but not in the others. The one common factor was that all the perpetrators had a migrant background or were refugees. While the incidents share similarities with recent atrocities elsewhere in Europe, they raise particularly difficult questions in Germany.

There, attitudes towards asylum, migrant integration and internal security are closely linked and deeply ingrained. The recent spate of attacks raises questions not only about the current government but also about the founding principles of state and society in post-war Germany.

In some ways, Germany’s troubled past has made the country more aware of the human dimension of the migration crisis. After World War II, the new West German state laid down unusually generous asylum measures as a gesture of remorse for the Hitler regime’s crimes against humanity.

Germany’s own post-war refugee experience – when some 13m German settlers were expelled from the territories recovered from Hitler’s occupation – has also made Germans acutely aware of the suffering of the dispossessed.

But the past also reinforces barriers between the indigenous population and foreigners. Germany’s approach to security is rooted in a Cold War fear of communism. Until recently, for example, an archaic citizenship law made naturalisation a difficult and lengthy process. It worked against the effective integration of foreign communities into mainstream society. Opinion on the German right has long tended to lean towards fear of foreigners – and increasingly of Muslims. They are seen as a potential threat to security, to the constitutional order and even to ‘Germanness’.

A toxic issue

When the European migrant crisis broke in 2015, the German response reflected both of these tendencies.

Merkel’s pro-migrant policy and spontaneous expressions of the German ‘culture of welcome’ (Willkommenskultur) incorporated the inclusive tradition. The anti-foreigner Patriotic Europeans Against Isamilicisation of the West (PEGIDA) movement and the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) embodied the exclusionary stance.

The growth of the populist right has normalised anti-immigrant rhetoric. Beatrix von Storch, an MEP and prominent AfD member, recently argued, for example, that German police should be allowed to shoot illegal immigrants.

Emergency workers and vehicles are seen following an explosion in Ansbach, near Nuremberg July 25, 2016, in this still image taken from video. Courtesy News5/via Reuters TV

Emergency workers and vehicles are seen following an explosion in Ansbach, near Nuremberg July 25, 2016, in this still image taken from a video. Courtesy News5/via Reuters TV

As a political issue, immigration has been as toxic to the mainstream parties as the EU has been in the UK. Migration issues have dogged the governing coalition. Now, the involvement of three young refugees in the latest violent attacks has consolidated the traditional German connection between migration and security. It has sent them to the top of the political agenda.

Following the recent attacks, Merkel’s pro-migrant policies have come under fire not only from right and left outlier parties but also from the more conservative members of her own Christian democratic CDU/CSU party.

CDU home minister Thomas de Maizière warned against hasty decisions in favour of a calm, measured response. However, the CSU Prime Minister of Bavaria, Horst Seehofer (where the attacks took place) was much more outspoken. He demanded a wide range of stringent security controls, some of which may not be compatible with the German constitution.

Seehofer, considered a prominent ally of Merkel before the migrant crisis of 2015, had previously demanded an end to Germany’s welcoming culture.

The lady’s not for turning

On July 28, Merkel brought forward her traditional annual late-August press conference – politically the most significant of the year – to announce her response to recent events.

She spoke both to the sense of betrayal felt by people who had welcomed refugees and to the growing concerns about security in public places. Focusing on the ‘Islamist terror’ incidents in Würzburg and Ansbach, she described the attacks at random, everyday locations “where any of us might be” as “a breach of civilisation’s taboos”.

She promised to find a better balance between freedom and security while standing against any attempt to threaten the German way of life or to ignite hatred and fear between the country’s cultural and religious communities.

Merkel outlined a nine-point plan, including promises to plug security gaps and introduce more effective early warning systems to help spot perpetrators previously unknown to the police. There are to be mock terrorist attacks for training purposes, involving both police and military forces. She also called for closer cooperation with European secret services, tighter European gun laws and faster deportation procedures. She ruled out any additional military engagement against ISIS, stressing also that Germany was not at war with Islam.

Those hoping for a sea-change in immigration policy were disappointed. Merkel stressed that Germany needs to adhere to its core principles of respect for the human dignity of all and to continue to offer political asylum. Sticking with her policy on the welcome of refugees, she simply repeated her 2015 mantra: “We’ll manage”.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Pregnant Woman Killed in Germany By Syrian Refugee

A 21-year-old Syrian refugee was arrested for killing a pregnant woman in Germany with a machete. The police do not suspect any connections with terrorism.

Police forensic experts work outside where a 21-year-old Syrian refugee killed a woman with a machete and injured two other people in the city of Reutlingen, Germany July 24, 2016. Credit: Reuters/Files

Berlin: A 21-year-old Syrian refugee was arrested on Sunday, after killing a pregnant woman with a machete in Germany. The fourth violent assault on civilians in western Europe in 10 days, the police said that it did not appear linked to terrorism.

The incident, however, may add to public unease surrounding Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door refugee policy that has seen over a million migrants enter Germany over the past year, many fleeing war in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.

German police said they arrested the machete-wielding Syrian asylum-seeker after he killed a woman and injured two other people in the southwestern city of Reutlingen, near Stuttgart.

The Syrian had been involved in previous incidents causing injuries to others, and had apparently acted alone, a police spokesman said.

“Given the current evidence, there is no indication that this was a terrorist attack,” a police statement said.

“The attacker was completely out of his mind. He even ran after a police car with his machete,” the mass-circulation Bid newspaper quoted a witness as saying. A motorist knocked down the attacker soon afterward and he was then taken into custody by police, the witness told Bid. The police spokesman said the man was being interrogated after receiving medical treatment.

Neither Sunday’s attack, nor a shooting rampage by an 18-year-old Iranian-German man that killed nine people in Munich on Friday, bore any sign of connections with terrorism, police said.

The Islamist militant Telegram channel, however, seized the moment to urge more “lone wolf” attacks. “Perhaps (any) small attack you do may add to the cause for the disbelieving (governments) to finally retreat from attack or oppressing Muslim lands,” the group said in an online post, according to the SITE Intelligence Group monitoring organisation.

The ISIS militant group claimed responsibility for both a July 18 axe attack by a 17-year-old refugee that injured five people near Nuremburg in southern Germany and a July 14 attack in which a Tunisian man drove a truck into Bastille Day holiday crowds in the French city of Nice, killing 84 people.

Many attacks pre-empted in Germany

Unlike neighbours France and Belgium, Germany has not suffered a major deadly attack by Islamist militants in recent years, though security officials say they have thwarted a large number of plots.

But opposition critics pin the blame for any violent attacks by migrants on Merkel’s liberal refugee policy.

A leader of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany posted a Twitter message after the Munich shooting that said, “Merkel’s unity party: thank you for the terror in Germany and Europe!” The message was later deleted.

The gunman, identified by investigative sources as David Sonboly, opened fire near a busy shopping mall, killing nine people and wounding 35 more, before turning his pistol on himself as police approached several hours later.

Bavarian state investigators said materials found in his home showed the gunman had begun plotting the attack a year ago after visiting the site of a 2009 school shooting in southwest Germany, in which 15 people were killed.

Munich police on Sunday arrested a 16-year-old Afghan youth as a possible “tacit accomplice” to the shooting and said he was suspected of having failed to report the gunman’s plans.

Interior minister Thomas de Maiziere, a member of Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats, pledged to review both gun laws and security policies, and seek improvements where needed.

But de Maiziere, a strong advocate of increased video surveillance, said German gun laws were already very strict and it was critical to understand how the attacker had obtained his pistol.

Bavarian state officials said on Sunday the Munich gunman bought his reactivated 9mm Glock 17 pistol – the most widely used law enforcement weapon worldwide – on the dark net, a part of the internet accessible only via special software.

German lawmaker Stephan Mayer, a spokesman for Merkel’s conservatives in parliament, told Reuters he supported stricter regulations on the weapons trade and the creation of a European weapons registry modelled on the German national registry.

Burkhard Lischka, a spokesman for the Social Democrats in parliament, told Die Welt newspaper: “We must put a spotlight on the dark net. We have to give our security agencies the staffing and financial resources to stop this illegal trade.”

The EU is considering reforms that would tighten gun controls within the 28-nation bloc and make it easier to trace the origin of weapons bought legally.

The proposed changes, which must still be enacted by EU member states, would also set more stringent rules for deactivating previously fully-functioning guns and making them available for sale.

Germany Sees Rise in Far-Right Violence

A new report on the issue has called for concrete steps to be taken in order to avert the emergence of what it called “right-wing terrorist structures”.

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere (R) and Hans-Georg Maassen, Germany's head of the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt fuer Verfassungsschutz) address a news conference to introduce the agency's 2015 report on threats to the constitution in Berlin, Germany, June 28, 2016. Credit: Reuters/Fabrizio Bensch

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere (R) and Hans-Georg Maassen, head of the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt fuer Verfassungsschutz) address a news conference to introduce the agency’s 2015 report on threats to the constitution in Berlin, Germany, June 28, 2016. Credit: Reuters/Fabrizio Bensch.

Berlin: Germany saw a sharp rise in far-right violence in 2015, a year in which it took in more than one million migrants, according to a report on June 28 that called for concrete steps to avert the emergence of what it called “right-wing terrorist structures”.

The annual report prepared by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency said the number of far-right violent acts jumped to 1,408 in 2015, an increase of more than 42% from 990 in the previous year. The incidents included attacks against journalists and politicians and attempted murder.

The report also chronicled 75 arson attacks against refugee centres in 2015, up from just five a year earlier.

Germany was home to an estimated 11,800 violent far-right extremists, the report said, roughly half of the total number of far-right individuals in the country.

“Current investigations against the suspected development of terrorist groups points to the possible emergence of right-wing terrorist structures in Germany and the need for the government to take rigorous action,” the interior ministry said in a statement accompanying the report.

Interior minister Thomas De Maiziere said Germany was seeing a rise in both far-right and far-left extremism and a growing willingness among activists from both sides to use violence.

“It is worrying that anti-immigration incitement is creeping into the heart of our society,” he said in the statement.

The report said the violent acts against immigrants did not generally appear to be systematically orchestrated, though many of the arson attacks did bear signs of careful planning and preparation.

However, German authorities recently broke up a suspected far-right militant group known as “Oldschool Society” and there are concerns that similar groups could emerge elsewhere.

Last year Germany took in more than one million migrants, the majority of them Muslims fleeing conflicts in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. The influx has put pressure on public services and raised fears of increased ethnic and religious tensions.