A deportation flight bound for Afghanistan carrying 28 Afghan nationals left Germany on Friday morning, a day after the German government pledged to strengthen its asylum regulations in the wake of a deadly knife attack. <\/p>\n
Flight trackers show that a Boeing 787 from Qatar Airlines left Leipzig at 6.55 a.m., traveling to Kabul. <\/p>\n
The flight marks Germany\u2019s first deportation of Afghans back to their home country since the Taliban retook power there three years ago, in August 2021. According to German news magazine Der Spiegel, the deportations are the result of months of negotiations and planning. <\/p>\n
Der Spiegel reported that each deportee, all of whom were male, received a payment of \u20ac1,000 ($1,100). The spokesperson for Saxony\u2019s Interior Ministry was unable to confirm this. <\/p>\n
In a news conference following the flight\u2019s departure, government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit emphasized to journalists that Berlin was not in direct talks with the Taliban. Rather, it secured the deportation through the mediation of key regional powers, he said. <\/p>\n
Hebestreit added that the German government has made \u201cintensive efforts\u201d to deport migrants who have committed serious crimes back to Afghanistan and Syria in the wake of a knife attack in the southwestern city of Mannheim at the end of May. <\/p>\n
A police officer was fatally wounded during that attack and several others were injured, with German authorities pointing to an Islamist extremism motive. The main suspect was identified as a 25-year-old Afghan refugee. <\/p>\n
The deportations also come a day after the German government unveiled a new security package following the fatal attack in the western city of Solingen last week. Three people were stabbed to death in the incident on August 23, which took place during a street festival. The suspect was identified as a 26-year-old Syrian man with alleged links to ISIS, who had previously been due for deportation. He turned himself in and confessed to the attack, police said. <\/p>\n
The attack in Solingen has sparked fresh debate in Germany over migration, with the country\u2019s governing coalition, led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz, receiving criticism for its handling of the issue. It has also served to embolden Germany\u2019s far-right ahead of key state elections this weekend. <\/p>\n
The incident spurred Scholz\u2019s government into action, with the chancellor declaring during a visit to Solingen at the start of the week that \u201cwe will have to do everything we can to ensure that those who cannot and are not allowed to stay in Germany are repatriated and deported,\u201d Reuters reported. <\/p>\n
The new security measures unveiled by the government in a news conference Thursday aim to speed up the deportation of rejected asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants, and also tighten laws on weapons. <\/p>\n
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser pledged during the news conference to \u201cstep up the pace of repatriations\u201d and \u201ctake further measures to reduce irregular migration,\u201d while also strengthening the power of authorities to fight Islamic extremism. <\/p>\n
Germany\u2019s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is targeting wins in elections in the eastern states of Saxony and Thuringia scheduled for Sunday. The AfD is currently leading in the polls in both states. <\/p>\n
The anti-immigration party has seized on the attack in Solingen in its political campaigning, with Bj\u00f6rn H\u00f6cke, the party\u2019s regional leader in Thuringia, telling voters they have the choice of either \u201cH\u00f6cke or Solingen.\u201d <\/p>\n
Migration has long been a topic of fierce debate in Germany. Scholz\u2019s center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) has typically advocated for a more open migration policy in Germany. <\/p>\n
During the 2015 European migrant crisis, then-Chancellor Angela Merkel, leader of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), adopted an \u201copen-door\u201d policy which saw hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing war in Syria and beyond arrive in Germany \u2013 a decision which attracted both praise and criticism. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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A deportation flight bound for Afghanistan carrying 28 Afghan nationals left Germany on Friday morning, a day after the German government pledged to strengthen its asylum regulations in the wake of a deadly knife attack. Flight trackers show that a Boeing 787 from Qatar Airlines left Leipzig at 6.55 a.m., traveling to Kabul. The flight <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7100,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7099","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}