Germany to propose security measures after July attacks

In five separate attacks from July 18 to July 26, 15 people were killed and dozens wounded. Two of the attacks were claimed by Islamic State and three of the attackers were asylum seekers. Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere will announce the new measures tomorrow and plans to have them adopted in the current legislative period, a newspaper cited coalition sources as saying. This would mean the proposal becoming law before Germany’s next federal election, due in autumn 2017. 

The new measures include speeding up deportations of foreign potential attackers and criminals and the introduction of a new reason for deportation: “danger to public safety”, another daily reported, citing security sources. A spokesman for the Interior Ministry declined to comment but said de Maiziere would present his plans on Thursday. 

In the past year, Germany has taken in more than one million migrants and refugees, most of them Muslims fleeing conflicts or poverty in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa, stoking fears among some Germans of an increased threat from Islamist militants. A daily said the new legislation would also facilitate data retention and limit how long migrants whose asylum applications have been rejected could stay in Germany. 

The proposed law could also allow doctors in certain cases to break confidentiality and inform the authorities if their patients confided in them about any planned crimes, according to a newspaper report. Meanwhile, German police arrested a suspect in connection with an investigation into a 24-year-old Syrian refugee detained on Friday after authorities were tipped off that he was planning a possible Islamist-motivated attack, officials said. But the interior minister in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, said the arrest was related to “acts of violence” in Syria and that there was no evidence of concrete plans to carry out an attack in Germany.