The German government on Wednesday defended its decision to deport an Afghan back to their homeland despite not being convicted of any crime.<\/p>\n
As part of the tighter immigration policy pursued by conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz since he took office last year, on Tuesday the latest in a series of flights took off from Germany carrying 31 Afghans returning to a country run by Taliban authorities.<\/p>\n
The government has said its priority was to send back people convicted of serious crimes, but Tuesday\u2019s was the first such flight which included one deportee who was not a criminal, a move sharply criticised by refugee rights\u2019 groups.<\/p>\n
A spokeswoman for the interior ministry told a press conference Wednesday that the government\u2019s aim was to \u201cbegin with deporting people who have been convicted and those who pose a threat\u201d but that it was also possible \u201cto put people on deportation flights who are not criminals\u201d.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said that those on the latest flight were mostly \u201cserious offenders who had committed crimes such as murder, rape and acts of violence\u201d.<\/p>\n
However he admitted that for one person on the flight \u201cthe designation of \u2018convicted offender\u2019 does not apply\u201d.<\/p>\n
Dobrindt said that \u201cpeople who have no right to stay in the country can also be subject to deportation if there are no signs they have integrated in Germany\u201d.<\/p>\n
He took note of demonstrations at Leipzig Airport which accompanied the latest flight but said the government would not be deterred from its \u201cfirm stance\u201d on migration.<\/p>\n
Merz came to office last year hoping that a tougher immigration policy would help his conservative CDU\/CSU alliance \u2014 to which Dobrindt also belongs \u2014 see off the rising threat of the far-right Alternative for Germany (Afd).<\/p>\n
The CDU\/CSU has since slumped further in the polls, with the AfD establishing a steady lead.<\/p>\n
Germany evacuated its embassy in the Afghan capital Kabul in 2021, when the Taliban authorities retook power, and warns its citizens against travelling to the country.<\/p>\n
The latest deportation flight follows a Taliban delegation travelling to Brussels last month to hold talks with the European Union about stepping up the return of failed asylum-seekers to Afghanistan, which was fiercely criticised by rights advocates.<\/p>\n
The Taliban authorities impose a strict interpretation of Islamic law, with girls\u2019 education stopping at age 12 and several restrictions focused on women.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The German government on Wednesday defended its decision to deport an Afghan back to their homeland despite not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5,355,26489],"class_list":["post-63901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-germany","tag-international","tag-mna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}