The European law enforcement agency Europol has supported German Federal Police and a criminal investigation unit in eastern Germany to dismantle an organized crime group suspected of smuggling migrants from Turkey to Germany along the so-called 'Balkan route.'
A Syrian man has been charged with murder after a "radical Islamic" attack on two Germans last year. Prosecutors allege that he targeted the tourists for being "infidels."
16 people, among them 11 convicted criminals, have been deported from Munich to Pakistan, the Bavarian office for asylum announced on Wednesday.
"Traded Children" (Handelsware Kind) is a new documentary from Germany’s public broadcaster ARD / RBB. It investigates the story behind the trafficking of minors and young adults who are being regularly traded like goods from Vietnam to Europe.
More than 400 police officers were involved in raids in four different German states and Austria against an international people smuggling ring on Tuesday morning. The ring is thought to have trafficked more than 100 people, mostly from Syria, illegally into Germany. Five suspects were arrested, a total of 19 are being investigated.
The parliamentary faction of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU party wants to use the results of an inquest into the security situation in northern Syria to examine whether the region could be deemed a safe zone for deportation. But many have criticized the plans.
There have been mounting calls across Germany in recent weeks to bring an end to the deportation stop for Syrians, following a deadly knife attack on two tourists in Dresden earlier in October.
German police have raided 26 premises across the country on Wednesday during an operation to dismantle human trafficking rings. Three suspects have been detained, who are alleged to have links to a criminal group run by a 65-year-old Kosovan national, who was also arrested.
Nine people were killed in two shootings at hookah bars in the city. The suspected attacker was later found dead in his home next to his mother's corpse.
German authorities watched the suspected illegal banking operation for a year before their raid. The suspects are accused of running an illegal hawala banking system between Germany and Turkey.
The latest events in Germany have once more put a spotlight on crime among refugees and migrants in Germany. However, official statistics tell a different story than the media.
Police said Tuesday that the drive-by shooting of a 26-year-old man from Eritrea in a small town in western Germany was "very clearly" motivated by xenophobia. While the Eritrean survived the shooting, the suspected shooter later died, presumably from a self-inflicted wound.