An Afghan knifeman tried to assassinate a leading anti-Islamist campaigner at a rally in the German city of Mannheim on Friday, and murdered a young policeman in the attack. The stabbing, carried out by a failed asylum-seeker who had been living in Germany illegally for years, was a searing indictment of successive German governments’ mass migration policies.
A week before the elections to the European Parliament, this attempted assassination of a critic of political Islam provided a graphic illustration of why support for the right-wing, anti-migration Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) has soared in recent times.
