One of the cell phone videos, taken on Friday evening in downtown Würzburg, leaves no room for doubt: Chia Rabiei, Kurdish asylum seeker from Iran, confronts the assassin, who is armed with a long knife and, according to the criminal investigators, had already been three people stabbed and injured seven more, five of them seriously. Rabiei runs up to the man – he is a rejected asylum seeker from Somalia – and hits him with a light-colored bag in his direction until the bag finally falls to the ground. Rabiei then briefly drives the alleged perpetrator on the defensive with martial arts movements, thus preventing him from attacking other defenseless people.
At the weekend, the Twitter world celebrated Chia Rabiei as one of the heroes of Würzburg who selflessly opposed the man with the knife. The 42-year-old is a Kurd, comes from Iran and has been in Germany for 17 months. His asylum procedure is still ongoing. An editor of the FAZ published a picture of the man with the little dark pigtail on Twitter on Saturday and introduced him as the man who had “kept” the attacker in check. In the comments below the Twitter post, applause for the man’s courage, for his moral courage. Many are calling for him to be granted German citizenship as a thank you. “Right to stay and the Federal Cross of Merit are probably the least,” writes one. Another suggests “honorable naturalization”. And someone else comments: “He did a great job for our country.”
Some also draw parallels to a case in Paris in May 2018. At that time, a young man from Mali rescued a toddler from a balcony by climbing up the facade of the house in seconds. A video of the rescue operation went viral and the rescuer became famous as “Spiderman”. French President Emmanuel Macron rewarded him with immediate naturalization. Would something like that also be possible in Germany? TV recordings by Bavarian Broadcasting Show how Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) thanked Rabiei at the crime scene on Sunday afternoon. As a spokesman for the State Chancellery confirmed, Söder now wants to propose a rescue medal to all those who have stood in the way of the knife.
Even if it is likely that Chia Rabiei can also count on an award, it is still unlikely that he will – as some are now demanding on the Internet – get German citizenship. “To say free hand, he’ll stay there now, that won’t work,” says Hubert Heinhold. The Munich lawyer, an expert in immigration and asylum law as well as naturalization and citizenship law, gives the reasons for this: “Naturalization, that is, naturalization, just into the blue, the German citizenship law does not know.” A discretionary naturalization, from which top athletes sometimes benefit, is “not possible at all” for Rabiei.
In fact, for example, Rabiei does not meet the requirements regarding the minimum length of stay in Germany, nor is he currently able to earn his living independently. In addition, the courageous commitment will not be able to help the 42-year-old in the regular asylum procedure, according to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. A spokesman emphasized on Monday: “Courageous commitment, as Mr. Rabiei has shown, is not a matter of course and therefore cannot be valued highly enough.” In general, however, the Federal Office only checks in the asylum procedure whether and what risk the asylum seeker is threatened with when returning to his country of origin. “The Federal Office cannot and must not take other services into account when deciding on the asylum procedure,” said the spokesman.
One of the paragraphs in the Residence Act (paragraph 23) makes it possible, however, to grant foreigners a residence permit or a settlement permit “in order to safeguard the special political interests of the Federal Republic of Germany”. But whether this paragraph will apply in the case of the 42-year-old remains to be seen.
However, lawyer Heinhold does not want to rule out that Rabiei’s actions in the asylum procedure could still be significant. Through media reports, his full name is now also available to the Iranian authorities. “It cannot be completely ruled out that someone there sees the case in such a way that he has prevented a Muslim person from performing godly deeds.” This could possibly lead to the conclusion in Tehran: “If he returns to Iran, then we have to lock him up.” In the Rabiei case, it would theoretically be conceivable that he would be allowed to stay here for humanitarian reasons – from the point of view “that he was so committed here”.
Rabiei is uncomfortable with people calling him a hero. “I’m just a normal person,” he says on the phone. He didn’t do that for a medal or a German passport. “Germany supported me, I was accepted here.” He was proud that he could help. Of course, he would be happy if he actually got German citizenship for his commitment. But this is also clear: “If not, I’ll just wait like all other asylum seekers for an appointment with the immigration office.”