For the first time since the Taliban seized power, Germany deported Afghan criminals by charter jet on Friday morning, a spokesman for Chancellor Olaf Scholz said.
Germany’s security interests clearly outweigh the interests of protecting criminals,’ the spokesman said.
Flight trackers showed that a Qatar Airways Boeing 787 took off from Leipzig for Kabul shortly before 7am.
The operation had been prepared for two months by the German chancellery and interior ministry. According to Der Spiegel, the 28 deportees were brought to Leipzig overnight from detention centres, given 1,000 euros in cash and accompanied by a doctor.
According to the report, the German government arranged the deportations through Qatar. Scholz’s coalition rejected direct negotiations with the Taliban regime.
In recent weeks, as the migration debate has flared up again, calls for the deportation of criminals from Germany to Afghanistan and Syria have become more frequent. In the summer of 2021, Germany stopped all deportations to Afghanistan due to the security situation following the withdrawal of US troops after 20 years and the return of the Taliban to power.
The flight to Kabul came just days after a Syrian national was arrested for the stabbing deaths of three people in Solingen.
German government tightens immigration policy
Germany’s ruling coalition announced tougher immigration measures on Thursday, days before two crucial state elections in the east of the country that are expected to trigger a political earthquake.
I think we can offer an appropriate package that responds appropriately to this terrible terrorist attack,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser of the SPD told reporters at a joint press conference with Justice Minister Marco Buschmann in Berlin.
The ministers pledged, among other things, to classify crimes committed with knives, including in Syria and Afghanistan, as grounds for deportation; to abolish benefits for asylum seekers whose state decides under the Dublin procedure that they should seek protection in the EU country they first entered; and to abolish the protection status of refugees who leave Germany to visit their home country without a compelling reason.
By cutting support for such ‘Dublin’ cases, the coalition hopes to reduce migration figures.
According to the German government, of the 25,000 asylum seekers who had to apply for asylum in another member state in the first half of 2024, only around 3,500 were transferred from Germany. The suspect in Solingen, for example, was able to avoid being sent to Bulgaria by hiding from the authorities until the deadlines had passed.
Government allows police to carry out random searches
There will also be a total ban on knives at public festivals and on public transport, and police will be allowed to carry out random searches for knives.
Anyone who attacks or threatens people with knives in Germany should be deported, and this should also apply to young people,’ said Buschmann of the FDP.
In addition, Faeser said the police would be allowed to carry out ‘random searches even without prior suspicion’.
Two new task forces to be set up
Berlin will also set up two task forces: One will investigate why the Solingen attacker, who had previously applied for asylum in Bulgaria, was not successfully extradited under Dublin rules after police failed to find him at his home.
The interior minister said that refugees whom other EU countries were prepared to take back would have their support cut off. This rule will become European law from 2027, following the adoption of the Asylum and Migration Pact.
The second group will be tasked with ‘preventing Islamism’ to combat radicalisation via the internet.
This will be complemented by additional policing of digital spaces, including biometric matching of public data and the use of artificial intelligence, Faeser said.
Buschmann said the new measures would be implemented ‘as soon as possible’.
However, the process is expected to take several months, as both ministries will have to prepare draft laws, which will then have to be approved by the cabinet and voted on by both houses of parliament.
CDU proposal to halt asylum applications rejected
Meanwhile, calls by the conservative leader of the main opposition party, Friedrich Merz (CDU), to immediately stop granting asylum to Syrian and Afghan refugees after the attack have been rejected.
Instead, the German government wants to cut off support for all applicants who return home without a valid reason, such as the funeral of a relative.
Buschmann also wants to make it easier to deny asylum to those who commit hate crimes motivated by ‘Islam, jihad or extremism’.
