A Girl’s Killing Shakes Germany’s Migration Debate, by Katrin Bennhold.

It was a gruesome murder: A 14-year-old girl was raped and strangled, her body buried under brushwood in a secluded area near the railway tracks near her hometown in western Germany.

But the fact that the chief suspect is an Iraqi asylum seeker has turned a terrible crime into political dynamite.

On Friday, the case dominated the German news media and became the latest cudgel for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s opponents and, some predicted, a potential turning point in the migration debate in a country where some 10,000 asylum seekers still enter every month. …

(Just for the picture)

The murder suspect, identified as Ali Bashar, a 20-year-old Iraqi, arrived in Germany in October 2015, shortly after Ms. Merkel opened the borders to hundreds of thousands of migrants. He was rejected in late 2016, but was allowed to stay in the country while his appeal was pending.

“If he had been deported, she would still be alive,” read a headline in the country’s largest tabloid, Bild, which devoted two pages to the case.

He came to the attention of the police several times, involving allegations of jostling a police officer, robbing a passer-by and carrying a knife.