Deportation of 69 Afghans from Germany on July 4, 2018
When 69 Afghans were deported from Germany , 69 Afghan citizens were deported on a joint flight from Munich to Afghanistan on July 4, 2018 . This collective deportation is the largest that the German authorities have ever carried out to Afghanistan.
The deportation of at least one person was illegal. Another deportee committed immediately after arriving in Afghanistan suicide . As a result of these circumstances and statements by Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer ( CSU ), who put the deportation in connection with his 69th birthday on July 4, 2018, the collective deportation sparked a nationwide controversy.
The collective deportation
The deportation of the 69 Afghans was carried out on the morning of July 4, 2018 by a direct flight from Munich Airport to the Afghan capital Kabul .
It was by far the highest number of Afghan asylum seekers considered to have been rejected who were repatriated in one flight at the same time. Until then, the largest group of persons to be deported in December 2016 consisted of 39 people.
Accordingly, an agreed upper limit of 50 passengers to be deported per flight, which the refugee ministry in Kabul had agreed with Germany, was disregarded. When asked about the number of deportees, the police officers involved in the repatriation replied that they had “wanted to make up for the earlier lower passenger numbers”. A total of 134 police officers accompanied the flight.
51 of the 69 people on board to be deported were men deported from Bavaria , five of whom were criminals. Other people came from Hamburg , Baden-Württemberg , Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania , Saxony , Berlin , Rhineland-Palatinate , Hesse and Schleswig-Holstein .
Controversy and criticism
Unlawful deportation of an Afghan
One of the 69 deported people is Nasibullah S., who lived in accommodation in Neubrandenburg (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania) until he was repatriated . Nasibullah S. was in an ongoing asylum suit, which is why he should not have been deported. One week after the deportation, S. should actually have appeared for a court hearing about the lawsuit. However, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees and the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Immigration Office wrongly believed that the rejection of the asylum application was final.
Nasibullah S. applied for asylum in Germany in November 2015 because he said he was being persecuted by the Taliban . There is no evidence that he appeared under criminal law in Germany.
On July 18, 2018, it became known that the unjustly deported man had to be fetched back. The Greifswald Administrative Court confirmed that the deportation was illegal. Federal Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer spoke of an "obvious mistake by the authorities" regarding the deportation. Therefore, the processes should be "checked again and adjusted".
In September 2018, Nasibullah S.'s lawsuit against his rejected asylum application was rejected by the Greifswald Administrative Court. His lawyer announced to appeal against the decision.
Suicide of a deportee
A 23-year-old deported Afghan committed suicide shortly after arriving in Kabul in an interim shelter. The asylum seeker lived in Hamburg for eight years, his asylum application was finally rejected and he was convicted in Germany for attempted dangerous bodily harm, theft and possession of drugs, among other things. Further criminal charges for robbery, theft, dangerous bodily harm and drug possession were pending in Germany.
Statements by Horst Seehofer
On July 10, 2018, Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer presented his “Migration Master Plan”. During the press conference, Seehofer commented on the collective deportation, which took place six days earlier, with the following words:
“On my 69th birthday, of all things, 69 people were returned to Afghanistan - that was not what I ordered. That is far above what has been common up to now. "
The statement was criticized as cynical, also from the ranks of the CSU. Seehofer regretted the asylum seeker's suicide, which he only found out at a later date. He went on to say that although the federal government organized the deportations, the selection of those to be deported was not made by the Federal Ministry of the Interior but by the federal states.
Selection of those to be deported
Refugee activists such as Pro Asyl in Bavaria have also criticized the fact that the voluntary commitment that has been in force since the bomb attack in Kabul on May 31, 2017 , in which 150 people were killed and, among other things, the German embassy was damaged, only criminals , terrorist threats and so-called impersonators to deport, had dropped out. Various deportees were employed, were trainees or vocational students. Six of the 51 deported from Bavaria are known to have appeared under criminal law.
On the other hand, Armin Schuster , member of the Bundestag for the CDU, initially stated that only endangered persons and criminals are deported to Afghanistan. That is a consensus in the federal government. However, 50 of the 69 deported Afghans were neither criminals nor threats or so-called refusal to establish identity. Schuster later described his statement as a mistake, "It was not based on the most up-to-date information." Stern reported that a person was deported on the day of their school leaving examination. Other passengers on the flight were doing internships or training.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b 69 Afghans deported on a collective flight , on welt.de.
- ↑ 69 Afghans deported on a joint flight , on zeit.de
- ↑ a b First deportation according to the new management report , on spiegel.de
- ^ Afghans unjustly deported , on tagesschau.de
- ↑ a b Afghans illegally deported , on ndr.de
- ↑ Deported Afghan is brought back , on tagesschau.de
- ^ Sebastian Pittelkow, Nicolas Richter: Initially no asylum for Nasibullah S. In: sueddeutsche.de . September 19, 2018, ISSN 0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed September 19, 2018]).
- ↑ A tragic case , on spiegel.de.
- ↑ Die Welt, deported Afghan was a multiple convicted criminal , July 11, 2018
- ↑ Seehofer on suicide by deported refugee: "Deeply regrettable" , on sueddeutsche.de
- ↑ 69 deportations for his 69th birthday , on spiegel.de
- ↑ CSU politicians distance themselves from Horst Seehofer , on zeit.de
- ↑ FAZ, Seehofer: Have to ask why this person was proposed , July 11, 2018
- ↑ 4000 Afghans without tolerance in Germany . rp-online from July 14, 2018
- ↑ At least we're talking about it again on tagesschau.de
- ↑ Seehofers 69 Afghans: By no means just criminals , on tagesschau.de
- ↑ STERN Magazine: Who are the 69 Afghans that Horst Seehofer had flown out? No. 30 , July 19, 2018.