Chemnitz Murder Suspect was Due for Bulgaria Deportation

An asylum-seeker from Iraq with a criminal record who is accused of taking part in the killing of a German citizen in Chemnitz, an incident that sparked anti-immigrant protests and violence in the south-eastern German city, was one of several hundred who was supposed to be deported to Bulgaria.

The Iraqi citizen, identified by Die Welt as Ibrahim A., was to be sent back to Bulgaria under the EU's Dublin Regulation, but for unidentified reasons the deportation did not take place, the German newspaper reported.

EU states have asked for almost 500 people to be sent back to Bulgaria under the Dublin Regulation in 2018 so far, but only 74 have actually been deported, BIRN has learned.

In the first eight months of this year, Sofia received almost 2,500 information requests about people that might be considered for deportation, approved 495 of them, and was sent back 74 people in total.

The requests overwhelmingly came from Germany, with 763 information queries, 164 positive answers and only 32 deportations, said the Bulgarian State Refugee Agency, SAR.

The refugee agency told BIRN that so far it has not received any query from the German federal government in relation to the Iraqi citizen who is a suspect in Chemnitz and could not at this point identify him with the available information.

The aim of the Dublin Regulation is to reduce transfers of asylum-seekers from one EU member state to another and prevent abuse of the system involving the submission of several applications for asylum by one person.

The main principle is that only one EU member state is responsible for examining an asylum application.

The system, which came under serious strain since the 2015-16 crisis that saw over a million refugees asylum...