Following the suspected attack at Berlin's Christopher Street Day, politicians have warned against a too-lax approach to the danger posed by violence-prone Islamists. The chairman of the Junge Union, the youth wing of the CDU/CSU, Johannes Winkel, spoke on Sunday of a "declaration of war" by radical Islamists against open society. "The West and Islamism: one ideology is declaring war on our society," Winkel wrote on the social network X.
The wake-up calls were being ignored, Winkel criticized: "Instead of defending ourselves and striking back with full force, we are refusing to hear the declaration of war." The Junge Union classified the act of violence, in a message posted on X, as an "Islamist attack on the CSD."
FDP leader Wolfgang Kubicki said he was "angry that the danger of Islamism in Germany is still not being fought with the necessary resolve." "It cannot be that after attacks like this, we keep hearing that the perpetrators were already 'known to police' or had already come to attention as extremists for some time," Kubicki told "Bild." "The discussions repeat themselves, and unfortunately so do the attacks."
Manuel Ostermann, deputy chairman of the federal police union, accused politicians of inaction. "Islamists are spreading calmly and steadily," Ostermann told "Bild." Islamists, he said, are "the greatest danger to the safety of people living in Germany." What is needed now, he said, is "finally an uncompromising security offensive, from citizenship law to deportations."
On the evening before, a vehicle had driven into a crowd of people at Christopher Street Day, killing at least one person. 16 other people were injured, three of them life-threateningly. Police issued a public manhunt notice for a 21-year-old suspect. He is a suspected Islamist identified as Abdul B.
Hesse's Minister-President Boris Rhein (CDU) announced that a debate on the political consequences of the act would follow. "Right now the focus is on the search for the perpetrator or perpetrators and on mourning the victims," Rhein wrote on X. "After that, the act will also need to be assessed politically." Rhein added: "Once again, a cowardly and inhumane attack has struck people who were peacefully celebrating."
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