Berlin immigration authorities embroiled in Nigerian EU migration scam

Westmonster

Berlin immigration authorities have been caught up in a scam involving EU spousal visas and illegal Nigerian migrants, which has made abuse of the system possible for years.

According to a Radio Berlin investigation, a gang of smugglers would charge migrants up to €13,000 in return for a virtually guaranteed EU residency card, by posing as a married couple with a Portuguese woman the gang would supply.

One Portuguese woman who was part of the scam reportedly had seven aliases she used to pose as the wife of the newly arrived Nigerian.

According to investigators, immigration officers fell for the forged marriage certificates, despite a warning from the government not to trust documents from Nigeria.

A junior immigration official told Radio Berlin that they became suspicious at the high number of Nigerian-Portuguese ‘couples’ obtaining residency cards and alerted their superiors.

“The suspicion that something is wrong with these applications has been stated on several occasions and also forwarded to superiors, but nothing has happened.”

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German intelligence agent drove alleged perpetrator in Christmas market attack to Berlin

WSWS

 

One week after the attack on a Christmas market in Berlin, there is a growing chorus of demands for a massive strengthening of the state apparatus, the elimination of basic democratic rights, and the erection of new barriers against refugees.

At its upcoming congress at the start of January, the Bavarian-based Christian Social Union (CSU), part of the coalition government headed by its sister party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), plans to call for more personnel and better equipment for the security services, additional powers for law enforcement, more monitoring of emails and communications services such as Whatsapp and Skype, and increased data exchanges between the European Union countries.

This is despite the fact that the Berlin attack cannot be attributed to a lack of surveillance or police powers granted to the security and judicial authorities. On the contrary, the alleged perpetrator, Anis Amri, prepared his action literally under the eyes of the authorities. It has now emerged that the 24-year-old Tunisian was driven to Berlin by an undercover informant of the Intelligence Service (“Verfassungsschutz”), which closely monitored Amri for months before he drove a large truck into a crowd on December 19.

Amri had been imprisoned in Italy for four years for criminal offenses and was reportedly radicalized while in jail. In 2015, he was released and went to Germany, where he applied unsuccessfully for asylum. According to an investigation by the German television program “Report Munich,” he joined an Islamic network in which at least two spies for the German intelligence service were active.

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