Horror over Mannheim attack
Number of knife attacks increases significantly
03.06.2024, 17:53
An Afghan stabs people in Mannheim, a police officer succumbs to his injuries. There is great outrage in politics. Figures show that knife violence is a growing problem. Religiously motivated physical assault is also increasing, but at a low level.
The Afghan who stabbed a police officer in Mannheim is still unable to be questioned. He has not yet been able to comment on his motivation. The fact that his attack was apparently aimed at an activist critical of Islam is an indication of an Islamist attitude. The act is shocking, not least because a video quickly went viral online showing the man’s brutal actions.
This raises the question of how dangerous things have become in Germany. Have such acts become normal? The answer is clearly not. But it is true that there are more and more knife attacks. Since 2021, These are recorded separately in the Police Crime Statistics (PKS)According to the report, the number of cases of dangerous and serious bodily harm as well as robbery with a knife increased significantly by 2023 – from 10,131 to 13,844.
But it is also a fact that the proportion of knife attacks in all violent crime has remained relatively stable. Five to six percent of serious and dangerous physical injuries were committed with a knife. In the case of robberies, the figure was between 10 and 11 percent. Since knife attacks have only been recorded separately for three years, it is difficult to discern a trend from this. However, violent crime as a whole is increasing and with it the number of cases in absolute numbers.
2023, over 3,500 politically motivated acts of violence
This figure includes all recorded stabbings, from gas station robbers to drug dealers – or even politically or religiously motivated perpetrators. But there are also separate figures for politically motivated crime, which the Federal Ministry of the Interior regularly publishesThey show very clearly that right-wing extremists are responsible for the majority of politically motivated crime (PMC). In 2023, around 60,000 crimes were recorded in this area. Half of these, around 29,000, were committed by right-wing extremists. Offenders with “religious ideology” are only in fourth place, after “PMC left” and “PMK foreign ideology”.
A very large proportion of these crimes are propaganda, online hate speech or even damage to property. A total of 3,561 politically motivated acts of violence were recorded in 2023. A third of these were committed by right-wing extremists. Only 90 crimes were assigned to the area of ”religious ideology” in 2023. However, this was a drastic increase compared to 51 in the previous year. The figures for the past three years have been at this low level. The picture is dominated by the areas of “right” and “left” as well as those that cannot be assigned. The latter are often crimes related to the corona pandemic.
The number of Islamist threats has also fallen from the BKA’s perspective, as statistics showAfter a peak in 2018 with almost 800 people under surveillance, there are now around 500. According to the BKA, there have been eleven completed Islamist-motivated attacks or assaults in Germany since 2000. 25 were prevented, 5 failed for technical reasons. The most serious attack took place on Berlin’s Breitscheidplatz. 13 people died when the assassin Anis Amri drove a truck into the Christmas market there on December 19, 2016. Amri was known to the authorities.
Afghanistan expert Ellinor Zeino from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation told ntv.de in March that it is not possible to fully control whether dangerous people come to Germany. “Many are already in Germany and Europe, and we do not know what their intentions are. The potential is there. It is actually only a matter of time before some of them manage to strike here too,” she said.
Afghans and Syrians have a lower than average rate of criminal activity
But it is also true that the vast majority of Afghans living in Germany are not criminals. Young men from Afghanistan and Syria are represented below average in the crime statistics, as BKA President Holger Münch said when presenting the police crime statistics in April. Men from North Africa, on the other hand, appear above average. Statistics such as the PKS and PMK have their weaknesses. There is an unknown number of unreported crimes and suspected cases are recorded, not convictions.
In the ntv Frühstart, CDU General Secretary Carsten Linnemann called for criminals to be deported to Afghanistan. However, this is currently not legally possible because it is not a safe country of origin. The same applies to other countries such as Syria.