Against the backdrop of the fatal knife attack on a police officer in the southwestern German city of Mannheim, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has called for a careful investigation into the situation in Afghanistan before possible deportations to the country.
“In this specific case, the Ministry of the Interior has been investigating for some time,” the Green politician explained in Berlin on Tuesday. “This is anything but trivial, because we cannot ignore central constitutional and especially security issues.”
The suspected Islamist attack during an anti-Islam rally in Mannheim has revived the debate over Germany’s suspended deportations to Afghanistan.
“It is of course in our interest that perpetrators who have committed serious criminal offenses are repatriated as quickly as possible,” said Baerbock. That’s why the rules have already been tightened, she added.
At the same time, however, she wondered: “How do we want to cooperate with an Islamist terrorist regime with which we have no relations at all? And how do we ensure that the next terrorist attack is not planned from there?”
Like its European partners, Germany does not have an embassy in Afghanistan that can supervise the repatriations, Baerbock said. Then-Interior Minister Horst Seehofer had stopped the federal police from supervising deportations “because federal police officers are not safe under these circumstances.”
Baerbock continued: “Last but not least, we owe it to the victims that perpetrators serve their sentences in prison and that murderers in Afghanistan are not released.”
