German refugee murder arrest in Freiburg heightens tensions

Maria L was 19 when she was murdered in October.

The circumstances of her death are horrifying enough.

But Germans have been sickened by revelations that a teenage Afghan asylum seeker may have been responsible for the rape and drowning of the young medical student, who volunteered for a charity that helped refugees.

The news has reignited a harrowing national debate over whether Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to open Germany's doors to hundreds of thousands of refugees has put her citizens in danger.

Mrs Merkel, MPs of almost every political hue and the head of one of Germany's police unions have all warned against an over-simplified response.

Germans urged not to scapegoat migrants after Freiburg murder

They emphasised the danger implicit in taking one isolated case as evidence that all migrants posed a risk.

But their voices carry only faintly into the fearful, furious clamour of those who believe that the establishment may be covering up a wave of migrant crime and that the press is colluding by turning a blind eye, or even lying about it.

Without waiting for a court to decide whether the 17-year-old accused was guilty or innocent, Rainer Wendt of Germany's DPolG Police Federation controversially told the Bild tabloid newspaper that Maria and many others would not have been victims "had our country been prepared for the dangers that always occur in connection with mass immigration".

Why German authorities feared a backlash

This is an emotionally charged debate, fuelled further this week by the arrest of an Iraqi asylum seeker on suspicion of the rape and attempted rape of two students in the town of Bochum.

Initially the police and local government, and then the national press were slow to report the sexual assault of hundreds of women on New Year's Eve at the hands of gangs of men with migrant backgrounds.

Apparently they feared triggering a backlash against the recent influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees.

National broadcaster ARD provoked outrage by initially ignoring the story that the Freiburg suspect was an Afghan asylum seeker.

Its editor in chief later defended the decision by pointing out that it rarely reported individual criminal cases, concentrating instead on events of national or international significance.

ARD has now covered the fallout, arguing that the case has become politicised.

But was its original judgement right?

Was the terrible death of a German teenager allegedly at the hands of a young asylum seeker one of a handful of cases or, as one senior policeman believes, evidence of a wider trend?

Crime and immigration in Germany

From 2014-15, the number of asylum seekers rose from some 200,000 to 890,000

In 2014, 122 of the 2,760 murders and manslaughters were committed by people defined as "immigrants" (either seeking asylum or here illegally)

In 2015, out of a total of 2,721 killings, 233 were committed by immigrants

Sexual assault figures reveal a similar trend

In 2014, immigrants were responsible for 949 out of 36,864 assaults, including rape

In 2015, 1,683 out of 36,532 assaults were committed by immigrants

In the first half of 2016, there was a 36% decrease in overall crime committed by immigrants, and there was a fall in the number of arrivals. Most crime involved more minor offences.

(BBC)