(MENAFN- Gulf Times) Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives called yesterday for stricter immigration rules and faster deportation of failed asylum-seekers after a public outcry over a 14-year old German girl who was allegedly raped and killed by an Iraqi.
Police in the Kurdistan region of Iraq said on Saturday that the 20-year-old suspect, identified by German authorities as Ali Bashar, had admitted to the murder of Susanna Feldman in Germany, where the case has stoked the immigration debate.
Iraqi authorities extradited Bashar on Saturday after Kurdish security forces had taken him into custody on Friday.
He left Germany together with relatives earlier this month.
'The procedures and rules for asylum, refuge and integration must be put under scrutiny, Christian Baldauf, leader of Merkel's conservatives in the state parliament of Rhineland-Palatinate, told Rheinpfalz am Sonntag newspaper.
Germany's generous refugee protection guarantees were raising questions, Baldauf said.
'Who can understand that a rejected asylum-seeker who has been tried several times for various violent crimes cannot be deported, but the same man manages to travel back to his home country in a cloak and dagger operation? he said.
The Iraqi suspect, who arrived in Germany at the height of Europe's migrant crisis in 2015, was known to police because he had become violent with officials over his asylum status.
Bashar had previously been suspected in the rape of an 11-year-old girl at a refugee centre, although an investigation was inconclusive.
His asylum request was rejected in December 2016.
Merkel's decision to welcome more than 1mn refugees in 2015 has boosted support for the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
The government has put aside more than €20bn ($23.5bn) to integrate asylum-seekers and tackle the root causes of migration.
Baldauf said that the state's answer to the murder case should not be 'chintzy populism or a racist hate campaign.
'It's about speeding up investigations and court decisions, reaching faster verdicts and finding ways of deporting perpetrators and potential offenders without exceptions, he said.
Wolfgang Schaeuble, president of the Bundestag lower house of parliament and former finance minister, said that Germany had to correct its relatively generous asylum rules.
'We must cut back parts of our German law, if we want to come to a common European asylum policy, Schaeuble told Wirtschaftswoche magazine.
Schaeuble added he had already fought against 'some exaggerations in Germany's asylum law when he was interior minister in the 1990s.
Germany's interior minister reiterated yesterday his desire for the country's asylum system to be overhauled.
'The politics of asylum in Germany must be fundamentally reworked. We still do not have a proper rulebook for the future, Horst Seehofer said in comments carried by the Sunday edition of the Bild newspaper.
The minister will reportedly present a 63-point plan on the issue to the media tomorrow, calling for migrants without papers to be refused entry at the border and tougher rules on deportations.
Feldman, a Jewish teenager from Mainz near Frankfurt, was found dead on Wednesday in a wooded area in Wiesbaden, near a refugee centre where the alleged attacker had lived, German police said.
An autopsy showed that she had been the victim of a violent and sexual attack.
Police said that there was no evidence her religion had been a factor and the Central Council of Jews in Germany cautioned against attributing any anti-Semitic motive.
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