Germany: Asylum for Cash Scandal

by Soeren Kern • May 22, 2018 at 5:00 am

Germany's Federal Office for Refugees and Migration (BAMF) will review more than 25,000 asylum decisions after allegations of corruption at its regional office in the northern city of Bremen.
Some of those granted asylum were considered by German authorities to be potential security risks, according to the news magazine Der Spiegel. They include Syrian intelligence operatives, human smugglers and other hard-core criminals — as well as potential Islamic State jihadists.
BAMF currently rejects almost all asylum requests from converts from Islam to Christianity, according to Thomas Schirrmacher, president of the International Society for Human Rights. He said that when undergoing "belief tests," BAMF often relies on Muslim translators who deliberately mistranslate at the expense of Christians or converts.

Pictured: City Hall in the Old Town of Bremen, Germany. (Image source: Jürgen Howaldt/Wikimedia Commons)

Germany's Federal Office for Refugees and Migration (Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge, BAMF) will review more than 25,000 asylum decisions after allegations of corruption at its regional office in the northern city of Bremen.

Interior Minister Horst Seehofer announced the audit after it emerged that a former official at BAMF's Bremen branch allegedly accepted cash bribes in exchange for granting asylum to at least 1,200 refugees who did not meet the necessary criteria. Five others, including three lawyers, an interpreter and an intermediary, are also being investigated.

The three lawyers allegedly received cash payments from "refugees" across Germany and submitted their asylum applications to the Bremen office. The interpreter then "interpreted" asylum interviews in such a way that the answers supposedly given by refugees matched the requirements for successful asylum applications. He reportedly received €500 ($680) per asylum seeker.

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Hitler and Reza Shah: Mullahs and Pro-Israel Writers Sing Together

by Amir Taheri • May 22, 2018 at 4:00 am

Reza Shah, founder of Iran's Pahlavi Dynasty, pictured some time in the 1930's. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

That political life is full of surprises may be an old adage.

However, there are times when something so unexpected happens that one has to look beyond surprise to understand it.

One such event concerns the new campaign to portray Iran as an anti-Semite nation and the founder of the Pahlavi Dynasty, Reza Shah, as disciple of Adolf Hitler.

Trying to justify their anti-Semitism, expressed through an anti-Israel rhetoric, the mullahs claim that they are continuing an old national tradition. To back that claim they trace their policy to Reza Shah, the man who founded the Pahlavi Dynasty and considered by many Iranians as the leader who halted centuries of decline.

In the popular uprisings of last January one frequent slogan was "Reza Shah! Blessed be Your Soul!"

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