Free Republic

A glaring rift has emerged between Angela Merkel's conservative CDU and its Bavarian CSU sister party over how to deal with asylum-seekers. The days of Germany's coalition government could be numbered.

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer has invited Italian populist leader Matteo Salvini to Berlin in order to discuss Europe’s border crisis. The pair has already spoken on the phone and are in “full harmony” on migration and security policies, according to a statement from the Italian Interior Ministry. Mr Seehofer is the leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU) party of Bavaria, which has pushed for a cap on asylum seeker numbers and disagrees with ruling coalition partner Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) on the issue. Mr Salvini serves as Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister...

Last year there were 65,000 people whose lack of travel documents prevented them being deported from Germany. Now, though, people who don’t cooperate in obtaining a new passport will be punished. In 2014, John O. (not his real name) received a letter informing him that his application for asylum had been rejected. John O., then 41, is from Nigeria. At that point, he had already been living in Germany for three years. The immigration authority wants to deport John O. — but it can’t, because he has no passport. He says it was stolen. There’s no way of sending someone...

German media reports say it is not yet clear if the man, caught with a car full of guns and explosives a week before the attacks, had any ties to the terrorists. A man arrested by German police last week has become the focus of media attention and speculation that he may be an accomplice of the group that carried out the terror attacks in Paris on Friday night. Police in Rosenheim in southern Germany arrested the 51-year-old man on Nov. 5. after stopping him at a routine checkpoint and searching his car, German media reported. Police discovered a cache...

-excerpt- A man arrested in Germany's southern state of Bavaria in early November after guns and explosives were found in his car may be linked to Friday's deadly assault in Paris, Bavaria's state premier said on Saturday. -excerpt- A spokesman for the Bavarian police said they arrested the 51-year-old on Nov. 5 on a motorway near the town of Rosenheim after investigators found eight machine guns, several handguns and explosives in his VW Golf.

Last Wednesday the Bavarian interior ministry released statistics that made for sobering reading. In the first half of 2017 some 685 sex crimes were recorded in Bavaria, a rise of 48 percent on the same period in 2016. Of these crimes, 126 had suspects who had arrived in Germany as asylum seekers. The figures showed that sex crimes with asylum seekers as suspects jumped by 91 percent in a year. While the large majority (71 percent) of suspects were Germans, people who had come to the country seeking asylum made up 11 percent of all suspects, a figure disproportionate to...

Revellers from across the world braved the rain as they made their way to the annual Oktoberfest in Munich for the start of the famous German event. The world's most famous beer festival, which kicked off today and runs until October 3, is expected to welcome more than six million people to the Bavarian capital over course of the event. Both locals and tourists alike were greeted with downpours as they made their way to the Theresienwiese, an open space in the Munich which is used to host Oktoberfest, but partygoers soon seemed to perk up as the event officially...

The conservative government in Bavaria is preparing a radical alteration to the state’s preventive custody laws that would allow judges to set their own limits on the incarceration of “dangerous persons,” rather than stick to the 14 days that German law currently allows. The bill, which has already been approved by the Bavarian cabinet, is part of a new “anti-terror” package designed to improve surveillance of people security forces deem “Gefährder” (a term used by the intelligence agencies literally meaning “endangerer”). […] The measures include extending police powers to search and keep tabs on potential suspects. But the proposal to...

BERLIN — German Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt’s political future is tied to the success of imposing a toll on foreign drivers using the country’s autobahns, and despite being slapped down by the European Commission he isn’t giving up on the idea.“The tolls are coming,” Dobrindt told the Bild newspaper on Friday, following news that the EU and Germany are about to settle their dispute over introducing the payments. “I am confident that we will be able to close negotiations with the EU Commission on a positive note in November.”Dobrindt told reporters he expected tolls to come into effect after national...

Officials in the German region of Bavaria are asking for increased surveillance of the Reichsburger — Reich Citizens — movement, whose members do not recognize the authority of the German state, following two attacks on police this week. Germany’s domestic intelligence services estimate 100 active members in the far-right movement although there may be a few hundred more hangers-on. This week’s attacks left a 32-year-old police officer dead. Bavarian officials said the government has shifted too much focus to Islamic terrorists, neglecting right-wing groups, amid rising xenophobia, anti-foreigner sentiment and increased neo-Nazi propaganda. “Bavaria has not previously witnessed such a...

A 43-year-old man who lived in isolation at his parents' home in Bavaria for three decades has been taken to a psychiatric hospital and German police are investigating whether his parents did anything wrong.

The leader of the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has had enough of her country being under attack by Muslim migrants that have been allowed to invade her country by Angela Merkel’s insane policies. Following violent attacks, some specifically sexual in nature, Frauke Petry backed the arming of the German people against the Muslims. Yahoo News reports:

Hit squads linked with ISIS terrorists have infiltrated Germany camouflaged as refugees, the head of Bavaria’s intelligence service warns. citing “irrefutable evidence” of planned attacks in the country in the wake of recent assaults by migrants. “We have to accept that we got hit squads and sleeper cells here in Germany,” Manfred Hauser, vice-president of Bavaria’s department of the Office for the Protection of Constitution (BfV) told BBC Radio 4. His agency is now looking into hundreds of potential cases of terrorists who made their way to Germany disguised as refugees. “We have substantial reports that among the refugees are...

“An explosion outside a bar in the southern German city of Ansbach, Bavaria, has left at least one person dead and 12 others injured. A large-scale investigation has been launched into what is believed to have been a “deliberate” act. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees will reveal why the suspect’s asylum application had previously been rejected later in the day Herrmann noted that those who are “seeking protection in Germany, must show full respect for the German legal system and the German population.” “The minister added that the attack demonstrated the need “to strengthen controls on those we...

Shots have been fired in a Munich shopping centre and a major police operation is under way German media is reporting. Reports say the area round the shopping centre in the district of Moosach has been sealed off, but details of the incident are sketchy. The security forces have been on alert after a migrant stabbed five people on a train in Bavaria on Monday. The authorities had warned of the danger of further attacks.

A vast majority of Germans believe terrorism will soon strike Germany, with 77 percent fearing an attack will take place in the near future, according to a new survey. That figure has shot up from 69 percent just two weeks ago, although that isn’t a huge surprise, given that the intervening weeks have seen not only a huge attack in Nice, France, on the country’s national day, but also Monday night’s attack on a train in Bavaria which left four people seriously injured. Both attacks were claimed by the terror group ISIS. […] Supporters of the Green Party were the...

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Chief of Staff Peter Altmaier said on Tuesday evening in response to the Würzburg axe attack that refugees are no more likely than anyone else to commit terrorist atrocities. All the evidence from the last 12 months shows that the danger of terrorism posed by refugees “is not larger or smaller than that in the rest of the population”, Altmaier told broadcaster ZDF. The chief of staff was making the comment after a 17-year-old who had arrived in Germany in 2015 claiming to have fled from Afghanistan, attacked passengers with an axe on a train near Würzburg,...

Terror group ISIS have released a video which apparently shows the teenager who attacked passengers with an axe on a train in Bavaria on Monday making threats. The video was released through the jihadi organization’s news agency Amaq, which had claimed a link earlier in the day. The assault on a regional train near the southern city of Würzburg on Monday left two of the victims in a critical condition, said Joachim Herrmann, the interior minister of Bavaria state. The teenage assailant was killed as he tried to flee. …

A hand-painted flag of so-called Islamic State has been found in the room of an Afghan refugee accused of carrying out an axe and knife attack on a southern German train, officials say. The 17-year-old man injured four people from Hong Kong, three seriously, in the attack in Wurzburg on Monday evening. He was shot dead by police as he fled. He had reportedly shouted Allahu akbar" ("God is great"). The attack comes days after a deadly IS-claimed attack in Nice in France.

A man armed with an axe has attacked around 20 passengers on a train in northern Bavaria, according to local police. Three people were seriously injured and one person sustained lightinjuries before the attacker was shot by police, a police spokesperson told local newspaper Main Post. According to Bavaria’s interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, the attacker was a 17-year-old Afghan citizen.