Will Deport More Criminals To Afghanistan, Says German Interior Minister
A day after a deadly knife attack in Germany, the country's interior minister said that she was working hard to deport more criminals to Afghanistan.
A day after a deadly knife attack in Germany, the country's interior minister said that she was working hard to deport more criminals to Afghanistan.
Nancy Faeser said that Germany is the only country in Europe that has deported serious criminals to Afghanistan since the Taliban came to power.
A 28-year-old Afghan asylum seeker was arrested after a deadly knife attack in the German city of Aschaffenburg that resulted in the death of a two-year-old child and a 41-year-old man. The attack has once again intensified the debate over the deportation of criminal asylum seekers to Afghanistan ahead of Germany's general elections.
"We are the only country in Europe that has deported serious criminals to Afghanistan for the first time since the Taliban came to power, and I want to say frankly that we are working hard to deport more criminals to Afghanistan," Faeser said on Thursday in Berlin.
The German interior minister also criticised the lack of implementation of the Dublin Rules in the European Union, saying, "We are once again seeing that the Dublin system no longer works."
The Afghan asylum seeker, who is a suspect in Wednesday's attack, should also have been deported from Germany to Bulgaria under the Dublin rules, but officials said that the deportation was not carried out due to the deadline.”
Ahead of Germany's early elections on February 23, Wednesday's attack has once again sparked a debate about immigration among Germany's political parties.
Friedrich Merz, head of the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), said in Berlin on Thursday that if he forms a government after the election, he wants to make German border controls permanent and ban undocumented people from entering Germany.
Merz, who is likely to be elected chancellor in February's election, said that the Aschaffenburg attack showed "a new face of unbridled cruelty in Germany". He stressed that all "illegal immigrants" should be turned back at the border.
Criticising the "inefficiency" of EU immigration laws, he said, "We are facing the ruins of a 10-year wrong asylum and migration policy in Germany."
Merz called for a departure from the Schengen principle on free movement within the European Union and pledged to order permanent control of all German borders on the first day of his chancellorship if elected.
