The Fake Refugee Story

It's one of those odd stories from Germany that draw you to ask a lot of questions.

"Johan" (my made-up name for this guy) was a young junior officer in the German Bundeswehr.  Twenty-eight years old.....he is originally out of Offenbach (a 'burb' to the east of Frankfurt and a area with a very high non-Germans as residents).  No one says that Johan himself is second or third generation German.  His dad was a fruit merchant in Offenbach.

So somewhere in the period of January of 2016.....Johan showed up (while a member of the German Army) in Zirndorf, Germany (hundred km SE of Frankfurt).  Johan is wearing appropriate refugee clothing, and is requesting asylum.  He says.....although without papers.....he's Iraqi.  He speaks to the guys there at the center in mostly broken French (the fact that he didn't speak any Arabic at all....should have been a BIG indicator of the bogus nature of his application).

The BamF folks accept the application, hand him some pocket money, assign him a room in the immigration center, and process his paperwork.

Now, you'd look at this and just feel....well...is it that easy for a non-refugee to apply and get past the entry situation?  Yeah, it is that easy.

How this falls apart?  Well, no one says why but this guy has made it to Vienna's airport for some reason....carrying a weapon, and hides it in the toilet area.  It's found and the cops figure out who the guy is, and an investigation occurs.  They have the fingerprints from his application as an asylum-member and as a member of the Bundeswehr.  My guess is that this opened up this cop investigation to a wider degree.

What is said now is that he had a conspiracy going on (at least one additional person, maybe a dozen), homes have been searched, and the German government is trying to understand what the heck was the master plan of this small group of young men.  Xenophobic has been uttered, but no one has aid out the plan in any detail.

My curiosity?  It was this easy for a non-Iraqi who spoke only French, to pretend to be an Iraqi seeking asylum in Germany.  So, how many more individuals did the same thing?  A dozen?  A hundred?  Could Russian KGB guys have infiltrated Germany using the scheme?

Charges on the young officer?  The pistol business at the Vienna Airport will be the most serious charge.  My guess is that he's looking at three years of prison for the various counts involved.  The refugee pocket-money that he's been getting monthly?  That will come into play as well.

A movie script?  Somewhere in the midst of this whole affair.....I see a five-star movie script waiting to be written and developed.

Had the airport gun epsiode never occurred?  I think the guy could have carried this whole fake immigrant thing to the next level.  He could have gone through German language school.  He would have eventually gotten a German ID card.  At some point, he could have disappeared from the Bundeswehr completely and just been some fake Iraqi-turned-German and start and entirely new life out of thin air.