An automobile crashed into a Munich trade union march, injuring at least thirty people.
The suspect is a 24 year old Afghan national who is legally residing in Germany.
The authorities believe the 10:30 a.m. crash was a deliberate attack. The police said the car passed a police cruiser that was accompanying the demonstration and plowed into the crowd. Officers fired one shot while arresting the man.
Contrary to early reports, the Afghan national had a valid German work card and residency visa. He also had no criminal history. Additionally, there was no deportation order against him.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz has demanded that he be deported.
Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann told the press “According to our current information, the perpetrator’s presence [in Germany] was absolutely legal.”
According to Herrmann, the man, now 24, arrived in Germany as an accompanied, underage refugee in 2016. His asylum application was rejected in 2020 and a deportation order issued. This, however, was overturned in Munich in April 2021 and a residency permit issued several months later.
The attack came on the day the trial opened for an Afghan man who is accused of stabbing to death a police officer, and wounding several others, in Mannheim last spring.
