Berlin’s state government will now have to release the first names of knife attackers, revealing the true cost of mass immigration in the German capital.
The Berlin Constitutional Court has ruled that the Senate must disclose the most common first names of suspects in knife attacks, siding with the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) in a politically charged dispute over crime data transparency.
The ruling, announced on Monday, forces the Berlin Senate to provide the AfD parliamentary group in the House of Representatives with a list of the 20 most common first names among German citizens suspected of knife-related crimes. This comes after the Senate had previously refused to comply with a request made by AfD lawmaker Marc Vallendar in May 2024, citing concerns over personal data protection.
According to the court, while naming suspects involves an intrusion into personal data, there is no convincing evidence that it poses a real identification risk to specific individuals. “The assumption of a relevant identification risk for specific individuals is not plausible,” a court spokesperson said.
Vallendar justified his request by pointing to what he called a lack of transparency in crime data, particularly since the German government stopped separately recording suspects’ migration backgrounds in 2022. In his view, the only remaining statistical clue to the origins of suspects lies in their first names.