Metro news agency
ANNOUNCEMENTS•
State Secretary Van der Burg (Asilo) says a fatal stabbing at Balkbrug in Overijssel would not have occurred if Italy had joined the European asylum agreements. If the man had been taken back from the country where he had first submitted his asylum application, according to the agreements in force, he would not have been able to stab an employee of the Veldzicht psychiatric clinic to death and seriously injure two others. The attacker then committed suicide.
The perpetrator was a Nigerian who had arrived in the Netherlands via Italy, reportedly The Telegraph this morning. As there were indications that he needed psychological help, he ended up in the Center for Transcultural Psychiatry (CTP) in Balkbrug. Found there November 5th the fatal events. According to the newspaper, the perpetrator was suspected of murder in his own country.
According to the so-called ‘Dublin Convention’, asylum seekers have to return to the European country where they applied for asylum. This prevents asylum seekers from starting proceedings in different countries. In the Nigerian’s case, that was Italy.
“The Lord Didn’t Belong Here”
“This gentleman did not belong here. That was also clearly established,” says State Secretary Van der Burg. “If he could have been deported to Italy, he couldn’t have committed that crime here.”
He calls the events in the clinic “extremely violent”, but according to him the stabbing incident is not the result of bad Dutch asylum policy. “It did not happen because politics is not in order here, but because Italy does not want to take people back and also allows these people to travel to the rest of Europe”.
“If someone is not allowed to stay here, you have to make sure they can come back. In this case to Italy,” explains Van der Burg. “It was very difficult.” This probably also has to do with the corona restrictions at the time, which restricted travel movements. According to De Telegraaf, this led to an asylum procedure being initiated in the Netherlands after all because a deadline had been exceeded.
Take responsibility
The Secretary of State calls for better deals in a European context. “And then we also have to adjust. Now we see that southern European countries allow people to move to Austria, Germany and the Netherlands, instead of taking responsibility and managing the procedure there.”
Southern European countries have been complaining for years that they have to take in a disproportionate number of asylum seekers due to their geographical location.
