Braunschweiger Criminal Police chief Ulf Küche has claimed many migrants are “tricking” the German government when they convert to Christianity and others have called for more stringent standards regarding migrant conversions.

Police chief and vice-chairman of the Federal German Criminal Police Office Ulf Küche made the remarks after the news of the brutal killing of a five-year-old child in an asylum home over the weekend, Tag 24 reports.

The asylum seeker who killed the child, and was later shot by police, turned out to have converted to Christianity to avoid deportation after having committed arson years before.

Küche said: “If the deportation of the offender has failed because he has changed his faith, then one has to put two and two together.” He claimed that asylum seekers were just using Christianity as a cover to avoid being deported from Germany.

“Muslim’s aren’t allowed to change their faith,” he added. “A lot has to happen that Muslims would abandon their religion.”

The evangelical regional bishop of Hannover, Ralf Meister agrees with Küche and has made it clear that more needs to be done to confirm that conversions are legitimate and not just done to avoid expulsion. “Abusive, frail baptisms can not be tolerated,” Meister said.

“It is the task of state courts to take decisive action against this form of abuse,” the bishop added but did not state any proposals to identify abuses in the system.

Viktor Pfaff, co-founder of the pro-migrant charity Pro-Asyl, said the case of the migrant who killed the five-year-old was “extreme” and cited the European human rights rules saying that no migrant should be deported to their homeland if they will face possible persecution due to their religious beliefs.

Adult baptisms in neighbouring Austria have also increased largely due to the many migrants who have converted from Islam to Christianity over the course of the migrant crisis. The Austrian Roman Catholic church said the figure had doubled since last year.

Whilst many migrants have fled to Europe specifically because they wanted to convert to Christianity, others have admitted they converted to help their chances at an asylum claim. Earlier this year, Muslim Syrians living at a refugee camp in Lebanon said they knew many migrants converting for asylum reasons.

One Syrian named Ibrahim Ali said: “A lot of people are doing it to get to Europe, the U.S., and Canada. While I plan to stay in Lebanon, I know hundreds who been baptised just to help their applications. They would do anything to have security for their family.”