Following the Berlin Christmas market attack, French anti-mass migration presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, along with her populist niece Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, both slammed German Chancellor Angela Merkel for her migrant policies.
As the story of the Berlin attack unfolded Monday, police announced that they had arrested a young Pakistani migrant in connection with the attack that has killed 12 people and injured close to 50. In response to news of the arrest, Front National leader Marine Le Pen expressed outrage on social media over the migration policies of German Chancellor Angela Merkel over what she called an Islamist attack.
🖊« #Attentat islamiste au marché de Noël de #Berlin : notre devoir est d’agir vite et fort » | Mon communiqué : https://t.co/eiQo7tcd1g pic.twitter.com/ggtrbT7CqB
— Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) December 20, 2016
In a press release Ms. Le Pen gave a statement on the attack saying, “How many more people must die at the hands of Islamic extremists before our governments close our porous borders and stop taking in thousands of illegal immigrants?” adding, “I call for the immediate restoration of our national borders and equally the immediate cessation of the distribution of migrants in our communities.”
After the dismantlement of the Calais Jungle migrant camp, the government of President François Hollande announced plans to redistribute migrants to centres across the country. Many of the migrants who left Calais did not go to government centres, but travelled to Paris where they have set up similar camps, most notably around the Stalingrad metro station.
Ms. Le Pen went on to say that the French government must “finally establish precisely the list of fundamentalist Islamist organisations,” and use the law to convict them under treason laws that criminalise giving information to an enemy while at war. According to Le Pen, the French government “has the duty to protect its people against these time bombs.”
The release also called for increased cooperation between the United States of America, France, and Russia on the subject of terrorism. “Washington, Paris, and Moscow must form a strategic alliance against Islamic fundamentalism, to ensure the external and internal security of nations. Let us stop the quarrels and unnecessary polemics, the scale of the threat forces us to move fast, and together,” she said.
Young populist Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, a Front National MP and niece of Marine Le Pen, echoed the sentiments of her aunt. On Twitter, she declared the attack was committed by Islamists and writing in German expressed her solidarity with the German people and the victims of the attack.
Solidarität mit dem deutschen Volk, das vom islamischen Terror schwer getroffen wurde. #Berlin
— Marion Maréchal (@MarionMarechal) December 19, 2016
Ms. Maréchal-Le Pen also laid the blame at the feet of the German Chancellor and said, “Massacre after massacre, the lessons are not learned.”
Since the comments made by the two French politicians, German police have said that the migrant arrested was the wrong person and is no longer a suspect, and the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. On Tuesday afternoon police released the young Pakistani asylum seeker and say that the real attacker was on the loose and was to be considered armed and dangerous.
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