A German court on Tuesday released an Iraqi asylum seeker detained last month over the fatal stabbing of a Cuban-German man that set off violent protests by far-right radicals, his lawyer said in an online statement.
The fate of a Syrian asylum seeker who was also detained over the stabbing of the 35-year-old German carpenter was not immediately clear.
“Today’s revocation of the arrest warrant was long overdue,” lawyer Ulrich Dost-Roxin wrote in a post on his website. “My client Yousif A. has had to spend more than three weeks in remand without any concrete suspicion.”
The two had been named as the main suspects in the killing, which sparked violent xenophobic protests and led to a scandal centered on Germany’s domestic spy chief, whose fate is being contested in a tug-of-war at the highest levels of government.
Chancellor Angela Merkel and coalition leaders meet on Tuesday to decide the future of Hans-Georg Maassen, head of the BfV domestic intelligence agency, who questioned the authenticity of video footage of far-right protesters chasing migrants in Chemnitz.
The center-left Social Democrats want him to go, but Maassen has support from Merkel’s Bavarian partners. Whichever way Merkel leans, it could create trouble within her government.
The Maassen row has exposed deep divisions over Merkel’s 2015 decision to open Germany’s borders to refugees fleeing war in the Middle East. More than one million have come since then.
Their arrival has fueled support for far-right groups such as PEGIDA and the Alternative for Germany (AfD), now the main opposition party in parliament.
