More than one in 10 Somali nationals resident in Germany were considered suspects in criminal cases in 2020, according to official government figures reported on by the Junge Freiheit news outlet.
Somalis were five times more likely to be involved in criminal proceedings than German nationals, where just 2 percent were suspects in an act of crime.
The figures came to light as a result of the federal government’s response to an information request from AfD politician Harald Weyel.
The figures showed that of the 47,000 Somali nationals living in Germany in 2020, more than 5,200 of them had been suspects in criminal proceedings, equaling just over 11 percent.
The figures omitted any crimes related to immigration or the right of residence, which cannot be committed by German nationals.
Weyel had requested the information in the aftermath of a double murder in Ludwigshafen that saw two street painters stabbed to death by a Somali migrant who is alleged to have shouted Islamist slogans as he cut off one of his victim’s hands during the attack.
According to the AfD politician, the rise in crime by Germany’s Somali community is a “threatening development,” as violence involving the group “fills the local news, and politicians stand by and do nothing.”
He blamed the “mass immigration wave that began as early as 2013” for a rise in crime across the country, calling it a “heavy burden” that German citizens now bear.
