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IMMIGRATION

Germany’s far-right AfD fires aide after ‘gassing migrants’ report

Germany's far-right AfD party fired a longtime spokesman Monday after reports he discussed shooting or gassing refugees coming to Europe's top economy in a taped conversation.

Germany's far-right AfD fires aide after 'gassing migrants' report
Christian Lüth speaking in Berlin in 2018. Photo: DPA

The parliamentary group of the anti-Islam, anti-migration Alternative for Germany, the Bundestag's largest opposition party, told AFP it sacked Christian Lüth “with immediate effect” after it emerged he made the incendiary remarks.

News website Zeit Online had reported earlier that Lüth was speaking with a right-leaning YouTube reporter in February and was secretly filmed by a commercial broadcaster.

In the conversation, he welcomed the fact that “even more migrants” were coming to Germany after it took in more than one million asylum seekers during the 2015-16 refugee influx because it would benefit the AfD politically.

“We can still shoot them all to death afterwards. That's not a problem,” Lüth is quoted as saying.

Or gas them, or however you want. I don't care!”

READ ALSO: Could Merkel's Christian Democrats really work with the far-right AfD?

Zeit Online said the broadcaster with the tape, ProSieben, only identified the speaker as a high-ranking AfD official without naming him.

But the website said several informants told it the speaker was Lüth. The video is to be broadcast on German television later Monday.

ProSieben said the man was trying to convince the journalist he was speaking to to work with the party.

“The worse Germany is doing, the better for the AfD,” he is quoted as saying.

Two months after the meeting, Lüth was reportedly suspended after he described himself as a fascist and praised his “Aryan grandfather”.

Lüth's grandfather was a submarine commander during World War II and received an Iron Cross from Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, Zeit reported at the time.

As the migration issue has lost urgency in Germany, the AfD's support has slipped. It is currently polling at about 11 percent ahead of next year's general election to name Chancellor Angela Merkel's successor. 

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IMMIGRATION

France ‘will not welcome migrants’ from Lampedusa: interior minister

France "will not welcome migrants" from the island, Gérald Darmanin has insisted

France 'will not welcome migrants' from Lampedusa: interior minister

France will not welcome any migrants coming from Italy’s Lampedusa, interior minister Gérald Darmanin has said after the Mediterranean island saw record numbers of arrivals.

Some 8,500 people arrived on Lampedusa on 199 boats between Monday and Wednesday last week, according to the UN’s International Organisation for
Migration, prompting European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to travel there Sunday to announce an emergency action plan.

According to Darmanin, Paris told Italy it was “ready to help them return people to countries with which we have good diplomatic relations”, giving the
example of Ivory Coast and Senegal.

But France “will not welcome migrants” from the island, he said, speaking on French television on Tuesday evening.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has called on Italy’s EU partners to share more of the responsibility.

The recent arrivals on Lampedusa equal more than the whole population of the tiny Italian island.

The mass movement has stoked the immigration debate in France, where political parties in the country’s hung parliament are wrangling over a draft law governing new arrivals.

France is expected to face a call from Pope Francis for greater tolerance towards migrants later this week during a high-profile visit to Mediterranean city Marseille, where the pontiff will meet President Emmanuel Macron and celebrate mass before tens of thousands in a stadium.

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