Germany: Wave of Muslim Honor Killings

The picturesque town of Hamelin, Germany was the scene of horrific honor violence, when a Turkish-born Kurd named Nurettin B. attempted to murder one of his three wives. (Image source: Martin Möller/Wikimedia Commons)

 

• The court heard how Amer K. stabbed the mother of his three children in the chest and neck more than twenty times with a large kitchen knife, because he thought she wanted to divorce him.
• “Then he takes the knife and plunges it into her chest, [penetrating] the pericardium and heart muscle. A second stab opens the left abdominal cavity. Nurettin B. then pulls out the ax. With the blunt side he hits her head, cracking her skull. Then he grabs the rope. On one end he ties a gibbet knot around her neck, then he ties the other end to the trailer hitch on [his car]… He races through the streets at 80 km/h [until] the rope breaks.” — State Prosecutor Ann-Kristin Fröhlich, reconstructing the husband’s actions.
• In Ahaus, a 27-year-old Nigerian asylum seeker stabbed to death a 22-year-old woman after she seemingly offended his honor by rejecting his romantic advances.

The trial of a Kurdish man who tied one of his three wives to the back of a car and dragged her through the streets of a town in Lower Saxony has drawn attention to an outbreak of Muslim honor violence in Germany.

US warships may join EU in patrolling waters off Libya

American warships may join European Union vessels off the coast of Libya by the summer in a Nato-led attempt to slow the flow of refugees from Africa into Europe, it emerged at a meeting of the G5 world leaders in Hanover.

Until now, the EU, through Operation Sophia, has been entirely responsible for policing the international waters off Libya and Nato has been patrolling the much narrower Aegean Sea between Turkey and Greece.

A New Era in the Middle East (II)

TEHERAN/HANOVER/MUNICH (Own report) – Now that the sanctions are coming to a close, German enterprises are initiating major investments in Iran and multibillion-dollar gas deals with Teheran. Over the past few weeks, several business delegations have already visited Iran. The state of Bavaria will soon open a business representation in the Iranian capital. On the one hand, German business circles have their eye on the Middle East market, because Iran “is the ventricle of an economic zone comprising a cross-border population of 400 million people.” With car sales in Iran, Volkswagen would like to compensate for the slump it is suffering on other major markets, particularly China and Brazil. On the other hand, Berlin and Brussels are trying to acquire access to Iranian natural gas. The EU Commission estimates that by 2030, Iran should be annually selling 25 to 35 billion cubic meters – probably liquid – gas to the EU. BASF natural gas subsidiary Wintershall has also shown interest. During his recent visit in Teheran, Lower Saxony’s Minister of the Economy proposed the construction of a LNG terminal in Wilhelmshaven as a German-Iranian joint venture. This is all happening at a time, when the conflict over Syria – with Iran and Russia on the one side and the West on the other – is escalating.

Germany Strengthens African Military Presence

One of the main points of discussion at last week’s high-level forum on defense and security in Berlin centered on raising the military protection of Germany’s raw materials sources.

Broadcast live via the government-financed media outlet Deutsche Welle, the forum—hosted by Berlin’s Federal College for Security Studies (baks)—had, as a top item on its agenda, ways and means of adding to the Bundeswehr’s existing presence in Africa within countries that are vital to the continuing supply of raw materials for Germany’s export-led economy.