BERLIN: The number of Syrians who became naturalized German citizens was three times higher in 2021 than the year before, as many of those who fled between 2014 and 2016 fulfilled eligibility criteria, data showed on Friday.
The overall number of foreigners who became naturalized Germans grew 20 percent in 2021, reaching roughly 131,600, the Federal Statistical Office said. Of those, 19,100 were Syrians who became German citizens.
Hundreds of thousands of migrants entered Germany after former Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the borders in 2015 to refugees fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond.
While, in general, a person has to live in Germany for at least eight years to qualify for citizenship, the majority of Syrians qualified earlier — on average after 6.5 years — by showing particular willingness to integrate, for example with strong language skills and civic commitment, it said.
The office said 2021 saw the highest number to date of people who naturalized early, with just under 12,400 cases. Of those, 43 percent were Syrian.
The number of Syrians who naturalize is expected to also rise in 2022. At the start of the year, 449,000 Syrian nationals had been in Germany at least six years, more than four times as many as at the start of 2021, the office added.
Number of Syrians becoming German citizens tripled in 2021
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Number of Syrians becoming German citizens tripled in 2021
- Hundreds of thousands of migrants entered Germany after former Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the borders in 2015 to refugees fleeing war and poverty
French court slashes jails term for trio over 2020 teacher beheading
- Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years
PARIS, France: A French court on Monday reduced on appeal the jail sentences of three men convicted over the 2020 terrorist beheading of a teacher who showed a class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Samuel Paty, 47, was murdered in October 2020 by an 18-year-old radical Islamist of Chechen origin in an act that horrified France.
His attacker, Abdoullakh Anzorov, was killed in a shootout with police.
Two friends of Anzorov, French national Naim Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, a Russian of Chechen origin, had their sentences of 16 years in prison reduced to six and seven years respectively by a Paris court of appeal.
Both were accused of having driven Anzorov and helping him to procure weapons before the beheading.
Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years.
His daughter, then aged 13, was not actually in the classroom at the time and during the first trial apologized to the teacher’s family.
The court however left the 15-year term for French-Moroccan Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui untouched.
The quartet were among the seven men and one woman found guilty in 2024 of contributing to the climate of hatred that led to the beheading of the history and geography teacher in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, west of Paris.
Paty, who has become a free-speech icon, used the cartoons as part of an ethics class to discuss freedom of expression laws in France.
