One posting should be enough
Faeser wants to immediately deport terror glorifiers
26.06.2024, 01:02
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Whether they are Hamas supporters, Islamists or supporters of knife attacks: foreigners who celebrate hatred and violence on social media should have to leave the country after their first post. Interior Minister Faeser wants to introduce a tightening of the deportation law to the cabinet tomorrow.
Foreigners in Germany who approve and celebrate terrorist acts will in future face immediate deportation. “Anyone who does not have a German passport and glorifies terrorist acts here must – wherever possible – be expelled and deported,” said Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser to the newspapers of the Funke Media Group. The SPD politician is proposing a change to the deportation law, which is to be decided on Wednesday by the cabinet. In future, even a single comment glorifying and approving of a terrorist crime on social media could lead to deportation.
The federal government is reacting to hate postings on the internet following the Hamas attack on Israel or the fatal knife attack on a police officer in Mannheim. “In Germany, too, the barbaric terrorist attacks by Hamas on Israel were celebrated in the most disgusting way on social media,” said Faeser. “The terrible Islamist knife attack in Mannheim, in which the young police officer Rouven Laur was killed, was also glorified by some on the internet.”
Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced the tightening of the law in a government statement after the knife attack in Mannheim. Faeser now said that after the cabinet decision, the coalition factions should also discuss the change in the Bundestag “as quickly as possible”.
New case group: “Reward and approval of crimes”
“In future, approval of terrorist crimes will give rise to a serious interest in deportation,” said government sources. This would make it easier to deport foreigners who approve of terrorist crimes and then to deport them. “In the opinion of the federal government, German security interests outweigh the perpetrators’ interest in staying,” the Funke newspapers reported, citing government sources.
In the future, “even a single comment glorifying and approving a terrorist crime on social media could justify a serious interest in deportation,” it said. Faeser wants to introduce a new case group for a particularly serious interest in deportation if someone is guilty of “rewarding and approving” crimes. According to the plans, a criminal conviction does not have to have taken place yet.
“We are taking tough action against Islamist and anti-Semitic hate crimes on the Internet,” said Faeser. Since Hamas’ attack on Israel in October 2023, the BKA has had more than 10,700 hate postings deleted “in order to stop these ever-new waves of hatred.”