Merkel rejects connection between Islamist terrorism and refugee influx

PanARMENIAN.Net - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Islamist terrorism predates last year’s record influx of refugees, seeking to separate the two issues after a series of attacks last month eroded her popularity, Bloomberg reports.

Addressing a party event in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Wednesday, August 17, Merkel said it’s “apparent” that terror groups are seeking to win recruits among asylum seekers in Germany. She also cited Islamic State operatives involved in the Paris attacks in November who entered Europe with the wave of migrants from the Middle East.

“But the phenomenon of Islamist terror, or of ISIS, isn’t one that arrived with the refugees,” Merkel said in the town of Neustrelitz, using one of the acronyms for Islamic State. “It’s one that we have and have had” already in the past, she said.

Emerging from a shortened summer break, Merkel spoke three weeks after defending her refugee policy in the face of public outrage over four attacks in southern Germany during a week in July. Two of the attacks were committed by asylum seekers who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, Bloomberg reports.

Merkel’s approval rating slumped 12 percentage points to 47 percent in an Infratest poll published Aug. 5, though her party still leads in all national surveys. Ahead of state elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on Sept. 4, the latest poll puts support for Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union at 23 percent, four percentage points ahead of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party. The Social Democrats, who have won the state’s last four elections, were at 24 percent. The eastern region is largely rural and has the lowest per-capita gross domestic product of the country’s 16 states. + Merkel will continue her campaigning in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on Thursday, holding a meet-and-greet in her own electoral district at midday and then speaking about agriculture later in the afternoon in a town near the Polish border.