BERLIN: Germany has deported 28 Afghan nationals charged with criminal acts, marking the first such move since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in 2021, as per media report.
“These were Afghan nationals, all convicted criminals with no right to stay in Germany, and against whom deportation orders had been issued,” German government spokesman Stefan Hebestreit said .
According to the Ministry of Interior in the eastern state of Saxony, the Qatar Airways charter jet carrying the deportees departed for Kabul at 6:56 a.m. (04:56 GMT).
The men had been transported from across the country to Leipzig for the flight. According to a German news agency, all the Afghan citizens on board the flight were men.
“Our security matters, and our constitutional state acts,” German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said on X (Twitter), and she thanked federal police and state authorities for their cooperation.
The government had to use alternative channels to arrange the deportation, as Germany has cut diplomatic ties with the Taliban government since the ousting of then-President Ashraf Ghani in a dramatic power grab three years ago.
The operation resulted from two months of “secret negotiations,” with Qatar acting as the intermediary, German magazine Der Spiegel reported.
Hebestreit said Germany had “sought support from key regional partners to facilitate the deportations,” without providing details.
While the spokesman noted that the deportations had been planned for months, they occurred a week after a deadly knife attack in Solingen, where the suspect is a Syrian citizen who had applied for asylum in Germany.
The suspect was scheduled to be deported to Bulgaria last year but reportedly disappeared for a period and avoided deportation. The ISIS (ISIL) group claimed responsibility for the attack but did not provide evidence.
