A year ago, a German teenager was murdered, and her death quickly became a rallying point for anti-foreigner feeling. Rumours circulated online that she had been murdered by a Muslim immigrant. But the truth of what happened was very different from the wild speculation.
Karin Gross lives in east Berlin. On 7 March 2018 she received a phone call at work from her 14-year-old daughter Keira.
"She said to me: 'OK, Mama I'm at home, give me a ring when you are coming back.' So when I finished work I got in my car and phoned her. But she didn't answer."
Karin called again, and again. No one picked up. She sent a WhatsApp message, but it didn't go through. She assumed that the network was down, or that her daughter had turned off her phone to have a nap.
Karin drove home. When she entered her flat, she saw that the living room door was closed.
"That was unusual," says Karin. "I searched the apartment for my daughter. I went to her bedroom. She wasn't in there."
She entered the living room. "I saw her sitting in front of the couch, gagged with a scarf full of blood."
Keira had been stabbed more than 20 times.
I meet Karin at her lawyer's office on a bitterly cold day in Berlin. She has a naturally cheerful disposition and, under normal circumstances, is quick to laugh.
"The daytimes aren't so bad," she says. The nights are a lot harder.
Karin speaks about the most traumatic experience imaginable with astonishing clarity. She is determined that people understand what losing her daughter has been like.
"I want everyone to remember what happened to her," she tells me.
Keira was a popular, charismatic girl and already an ice skating star in Berlin at 14. Karin was a single mother and Keira her only child.
While the police investigation continued, a very different process was taking place online. Keira's death was swiftly exploited by activists hostile to migrants.
"It only took hours for there to be posts from far-right actors with the hashtag 'Keira' on Twitter and on Facebook," says Oliver Saal, a researcher at the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, an anti-extremism organisation. "Posts appeared about the case suggesting that immigrants had committed this crime.
"The perpetrator was still unknown, and they knew it. But because Keira had been murdered with a knife, (they assumed) it had to be a non-German who had done it.
"Far-right actors claimed that no German could ever do such a thing."
This speculation appeared to confirm the worst fears of many Germans who opposed Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to accept hundreds of thousands of refugees in the summer of 2015.
Concerns about mass immigration have fuelled the success of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which entered the German parliament as the third biggest party in September 2017.
Keira's death also followed two other widely-discussed murders in Germany: Maria Ladenburger, a student murdered in 2016 by a refugee who claimed to be from Afghanistan; and a 15-year -old girl known as Mia V, who was killed by her Afghan ex-boyfriend in the town of Kandel in 2017.
There has been an increase in crime committed by migrants in Germany since 2015. Some researchers put this down to the high proportion of refugees who are young and male. Young men commit more crimes than any other demographic.
Overall, however, crime in Germany is falling - down to its lowest level since 1992. While violent crime rose between 2014 and 2016, there was a 2.5% decrease between 2016 and 2017.
Karin Gross lives in east Berlin. On 7 March 2018 she received a phone call at work from her 14-year-old daughter Keira.
"She said to me: 'OK, Mama I'm at home, give me a ring when you are coming back.' So when I finished work I got in my car and phoned her. But she didn't answer."
Karin called again, and again. No one picked up. She sent a WhatsApp message, but it didn't go through. She assumed that the network was down, or that her daughter had turned off her phone to have a nap.
Karin drove home. When she entered her flat, she saw that the living room door was closed.
"That was unusual," says Karin. "I searched the apartment for my daughter. I went to her bedroom. She wasn't in there."
She entered the living room. "I saw her sitting in front of the couch, gagged with a scarf full of blood."
Keira had been stabbed more than 20 times.
I meet Karin at her lawyer's office on a bitterly cold day in Berlin. She has a naturally cheerful disposition and, under normal circumstances, is quick to laugh.
"The daytimes aren't so bad," she says. The nights are a lot harder.
Karin speaks about the most traumatic experience imaginable with astonishing clarity. She is determined that people understand what losing her daughter has been like.
"I want everyone to remember what happened to her," she tells me.
Keira was a popular, charismatic girl and already an ice skating star in Berlin at 14. Karin was a single mother and Keira her only child.
While the police investigation continued, a very different process was taking place online. Keira's death was swiftly exploited by activists hostile to migrants.
"It only took hours for there to be posts from far-right actors with the hashtag 'Keira' on Twitter and on Facebook," says Oliver Saal, a researcher at the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, an anti-extremism organisation. "Posts appeared about the case suggesting that immigrants had committed this crime.
"The perpetrator was still unknown, and they knew it. But because Keira had been murdered with a knife, (they assumed) it had to be a non-German who had done it.
"Far-right actors claimed that no German could ever do such a thing."
This speculation appeared to confirm the worst fears of many Germans who opposed Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to accept hundreds of thousands of refugees in the summer of 2015.
Concerns about mass immigration have fuelled the success of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which entered the German parliament as the third biggest party in September 2017.
Keira's death also followed two other widely-discussed murders in Germany: Maria Ladenburger, a student murdered in 2016 by a refugee who claimed to be from Afghanistan; and a 15-year -old girl known as Mia V, who was killed by her Afghan ex-boyfriend in the town of Kandel in 2017.
There has been an increase in crime committed by migrants in Germany since 2015. Some researchers put this down to the high proportion of refugees who are young and male. Young men commit more crimes than any other demographic.
Overall, however, crime in Germany is falling - down to its lowest level since 1992. While violent crime rose between 2014 and 2016, there was a 2.5% decrease between 2016 and 2017.
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