Markwort believes that the deaths of the two young people who died in the knife attack in Brokstedt could have been prevented if the desk workers had done their jobs more conscientiously. Nancy Faeser must also be unable to sleep well after the double murder.

Monday

May the desk criminals sleep poorly for weeks. May they toss and turn in their beds in memory of the two young people who were stabbed to death on a train journey to Kiel. 19-year-old Danny P. and 17-year-old Ann-Marie K. could still be alive if several desk workers had done their jobs more conscientiously and quickly.

If the judges, experts and officials hadn’t acted so negligently, the stabber Ibrahim A. wouldn’t have gotten on the train. He would have been in prison. The 33-year-old, who was born in Palestine but is said to be a stateless asylum seeker, had caught the attention of the police and courts on several occasions.

The offenses for which he was reported read like a cross-section of the penal code. Here is the order from September 2015 to September 2022: Theft, misuse of credit cards, physical harm, dangerous bodily harm, theft, physical harm, sexual assault, sexual assault, rape, physical harm, property damage, physical harm, threats, dangerous physical harm, physical harm, physical harm, physical harm.

In November 2021, he was thrown out of the community accommodation in Hamburg because of violence. In December he attacked a man with an iron bar in a drug consultation. On January 18, he stabbed a homeless man with a knife in a soup kitchen. A Hamburg district court sentenced him to imprisonment for one year and one month. In prison, Ibrahim A. became violent towards a fellow prisoner and a prison officer.

Because of many offences, the judges only imposed fines or suspended prison sentences, so that Ibrahim A. was let loose on mankind again and again. The judges have made themselves complicit in the death of the two young people with mild sentences. Politicians’ knee-jerk demands for higher penalties are useless if judges don’t exhaust the existing range of penalties and don’t lock up long-time offenders.

Some reviewers are just as guilty. A few days before his release and his double murder on the regional train, a psychiatrist wrote about Ibrahim A. that he saw no harm to others or himself. A deadly mistake. Will this reviewer be held accountable? Can he continue to judge perpetrators? An appraiser in the construction business who is so wrong can hardly count on orders.

The next ones I wish sleepless nights on are federal officials. After the double murder, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser stood up and asked accusingly how it could be that such a perpetrator was still in the country. She must ask her own authority. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bamf) is part of Nancy Faeser’s area of ​​responsibility.

There has been an application from the Ministry of Social Affairs in Kiel for more than a year to check Ibrahim A.’s protection status. His protection could be revoked because he committed crimes. Such a procedure can also lead to deportation. In terms of Ibrahim A., it is on the back burner. When the Ministry of Social Affairs in Kiel asked, the Bamf refused to answer.

Research by journalists was also turned down. The minister can insist on information. It must inform the public exactly what has been missed. She also has to sleep badly.

FOCUS founding editor-in-chief Helmut Markwort has been an FDP member of the Bavarian state parliament since 2018.