Germany has deported 32 men to Afghanistan, the Federal Interior Ministry confirmed on Tuesday. The men were flown from Leipzig to Kabul. The deportation follows a series of previous flights carried out under agreements reached between the German government and the Taliban, who currently govern Afghanistan.
According to the Federal Interior Ministry, those deported on Tuesday were individuals who had come to the attention of authorities through criminal conduct, among other offences, for homicide, child sexual abuse, rape, drug trafficking, and aggravated extortion.
Twelve of the 32 men came from Baden-Württemberg alone, according to a statement from that state's justice ministry. Other states involved were Lower Saxony, Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia, and Schleswig-Holstein, the Federal Interior Ministry said.
The Left party criticised the deportations. Clara Bünger, the party's domestic policy spokesperson, said it was alarming how regularly federal and state authorities were once again deporting people to Afghanistan. She argued that human rights concerns had been entirely abandoned and that the normalisation of the Taliban regime appeared to cause no worry either.
Bünger also pointed to conditions inside Afghanistan, high unemployment, millions of people suffering from acute hunger, the systematic stripping of rights from women and girls, and the brutal suppression of political dissent. No one should be deported to such conditions, she said, regardless of what offences a person had committed.
Baden-Württemberg's Justice Minister Moritz Oppelt (CDU) took a contrasting position. Speaking in Stuttgart, he described the deportations as a massive gain for security in Germany. He also pledged that Baden-Württemberg would continue to do everything in its power to remove foreign nationals who were required to leave the country.
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