22/12/2016
Berlin Attack: The failure of German security explained by the weight of history
The Berlin tragedy was (and no doubt will still be) an opportunity for the extreme-right and populists across Europe to attack the migrant welcoming policy promoted by Chancellor Angela Merkel. It is a wrong and bad judgement. Of course, the 2015 influx of “Syrian refugees” was exploited by IS, and maybe by other criminal or terrorist organizations, to plant terrorists or rejects in Europe. This was the case for those who attacked Paris on November 13, 2015, or Brussels on March 22, 2016. Others have since been arrested—in Salzburg, Paris, or elsewhere. But how many are we talking about? Approximately twenty have been identified (and are either dead or in prison); European intelligence agencies estimate that a couple dozens of jihadists were able to enter the continent between the summer and fall of 2015 by impersonating refugees.
