Afghanistan sends deported asylum-seeker back to Germany

In an article designed to raise the hackles of those worried about foreigners and crime, German daily Bild reported on Thursday that Afghanistan had turned away an Afghan deportee with a long criminal record at its border and sent him back to Germany.

The attempted deportation was carried out earlier this week, but unlike other deportees aboard the plane to Kabul, 23-year-old Mortaza D. was refused entry and flown back to Munich.

He is now in a juvenile detention center in the Bavarian capital pending further review of his case.

Bild listed more than 20 crimes that Mortaza D., who first applied for asylum in 2010, allegedly committed and for which he was sent to prison in Germany. But the Afghan government says his criminal record was not the reason he was turned away.

Mentally ill?

“The individual was mentally ill and, as a result of a joint decision by both sides [Afghanistan and Germany], he was sent back to Germany,” Murtaza Rasuli, head of legal support for Afghan returnees at the Afghan Ministry of Refugees and Repatriations, told DW.

“Based on the agreement we [Afghanistan] have with Germany, vulnerable people cannot be deported to Afghanistan. This man met the criteria and was, therefore, sent back to Germany.”

The German Interior Ministry refused to comment on Mortaza D.’s mental health, citing his right to privacy. However, it did confirm there is an agreement concerning serious illness for which adequate medical treatment doesn’t exist in Afghanistan or which makes a safe return impossible.

Read more: EU states push ahead with Afghanistan deportations, despite increased danger

28:34 mins.

The Interior Ministry also confirmed that Mortaza D. had additionally been refused entry because of doubts as to his true identity and the authenticity of his travel documents — something that apparently took German officials by surprise.

The Interior Ministry of the western German state of Hesse, which is ultimately responsible for the deportation, said that Mortaza D.’s documentation was issued by the Afghan general consulate in Germany. Decisions on whether individuals face deportation rest partially with individual German states, and federal police often assist in carrying them out.

02:05 mins.

A suspended prison sentence

Hesse’s Interior Ministry added that deportees are given a medical examination prior to departure to determine their fitness to travel and that regional immigration authorities are asked whether there is any reason not to deport those deemed to be in Germany illegally.

The Hessian Interior Ministry said that Mortaza D. would be returning from Munich in the near future. But he won’t be a free man. He’ll resume serving a prison sentence that was suspended when he agreed to voluntary deportation.

According to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), some 24,000 people were deported from Germany in 2017, while around 29,500 returned to their countries of origin of their own accord. The numbers of people without a long-term right to reside in Germany are far higher. Many factors make deportations difficult to carry out, including difficulties in obtaining valid travel documents and countries of origins refusing to take deportees back.

Last year a man deported from Germany to Afghanistan committed suicide shortly after landing back in Kabul.

• Deportations from Germany to Afghanistan

  By the planeload

  On September 12, 2017, a flight left Germany’s Düsseldorf airport for Afghanistan, carrying 15 rejected asylum seekers in what is the first group deportation to the country since a deadly car bomb blast near the German embassy in Kabul in late May. The opposition Greens and Left party slammed the resumption of deportations to Afghanistan as “cynical.”

• Deportations from Germany to Afghanistan

  Fighting for a chance

  In March 2017, high school students in Cottbus made headlines with a campaign to save three Afghan classmates from deportation. They demonstrated, collected signatures for a petition and raised money for an attorney to contest the teens’ asylum rejections – safe in the knowledge that their friends, among them Wali (above), can not be deported as long as proceedings continue.

• Deportations from Germany to Afghanistan

  ‘Kabul is not safe’

  “Headed toward deadly peril,” this sign reads at a demonstration in Munich airport in February. Protesters often show up at German airports where the deportations take place. Several collective deportations left Germany in December 2016, and between January and May 2017. Protesters believe that Afghanistan is too dangerous for refugees to return.

• Deportations from Germany to Afghanistan

  From Würzburg to Kabul

  Badam Haidari, in his mid-30s, spent seven years in Germany before he was deported to Afghanistan in January 2017. He had previously worked for USAID in Afghanistan and fled the Taliban, whom he still fears years later – hoping that he will be able to return to Germany after all.

• Deportations from Germany to Afghanistan

  Persecuted minorities

  In January of the same year, officials deported Afghan Hindu Samir Narang from Hamburg, where he had lived with his family for four years. Afghanistan, the young man told German public radio, “is not safe.” Minorities from Afghanistan who return because asylum is denied face religious persecution in the Muslim country. Deportation to Afghanistan is “life-threatening” to Samir, says change.org.

• Deportations from Germany to Afghanistan

  Reluctant returnees

  Rejected asylum seekers deported from Germany to Kabul, with 20 euros in their pockets from the German authorities to tide them over at the start, can turn to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) for assistance. Funded by the German Foreign Office, members of the IPSO international psychosocial organization counsel the returnees.

  Author: Dagmar Breitenbach

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Article source: https://www.dw.com/en/afghanistan-sends-deported-asylum-seeker-back-to-germany/a-47023627