The suicide bomber who injured 15 people at a German festival was ordered to be deported from Germany in 2015, but was able to stay after a campaigning effort from members of the German parliament.
A 27-year-old Syrian asylum seeker blew himself up Sunday after getting refused entry to a music festival in the town of Ansbach. Twelve people were left in critical condition and another 11 received injuries from the blast. (RELATED: Bomber In Germany Was Syrian Refugee Who Had Been Ordered For Deportation Twice)
The man was previously set to get deported from Germany in early 2015. He had shown suicidal tendencies and had injured his legs and arms at the time, which activists argued made him ineligible for deportation. Harald Weinberg, a member of parliament from the socialist Left Party, was part of the campaign to keep him in Germany.
“Again and again, refugee activists approached me asking to help deported refugees,” Weinberg told Deutsche Presse Agentur. “That’s what happened in this case.”
Despite the terrible attack in his own constituency, Weinberg doesn’t regret his intervention.
“From what I knew then, I would have made the same decision today,” Weinberg told DPA. “I am not a psychiatrist. I can not purely look at the people and weigh in on each case.”
The 27-year-old showed radical tendencies as early as 2014, and he pledged allegiance to Islamic State prior to the attack Sunday.
“A provisional translation by an interpreter shows that he expressly announces, in the name of Allah, and testifying his allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a famous Islamist leader, an act of revenge against the Germans because they’re getting in the way of Islam,” Joachim Herrmann, Bavaria’s interior minister, said of the motive behind the attack.
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